


(life happens) wherever you are

by howlikeagod



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, AtLA says Prisons Are a Tool of the Oppressor, Ba Sing Se, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Customer Service, F/F, F/M, Gen, Give Zuko A Pet 2k19, Minor Character Death, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, POV Changes, The Jasmine Dragon (Avatar), Toph's life-changing field trip, Zuko's Morality Coma, Zuko's mommy issues, and other things that can be seen from space, not exactly cruelty to animals. more like rudeness to animals, propaganda and brainwashing, so many POV changes, technically a canon divergence coffeeshop au, the power of bi polyamory saves the day, the violence inherent in the system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-01-21 01:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 159,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21291359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/howlikeagod
Summary: On the day before Ba Sing Se falls, Katara decides two things: 1) not to stop for a cup of tea; 2) consequently, the fate of the world.Behind the walls, Zuko loses sleep, runs errands, contemplates treason, and drinks a lot of hot leaf juice—not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Implied Bato/Hakoda, Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 1439
Kudos: 4985
Collections: ATLA faves, AtLA >>100k fics to read, AtLA to read soon, Avidreaders ATLA completed faves, Best of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Quality ATLA, RaeLynn's Epic Rec List, The Best of Avatar the Last Airbender, The Last Rec List, Zuko deserves the world, avataner, avatar tingz





	1. Calming Jasmine Tea

**Author's Note:**

> So remember how the only reason Azula finds out Zuko and Iroh are in Ba Sing Se is because Katara completely coincidentally went to their tea shop? What if... that didn't happen.
> 
> Title from the actual show instead of a Mountain Goats song this time! Can you believe it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: propaganda and brainwashing, depictions of a panic attack, canon-typical discussion of war, genocide, and child abuse

“I’ll be honest,” Sokka shrugs, “I kinda assumed you were dead.”

“Yeah,” agrees Toph. “We totally thought you kicked the bucket, Sparky.”

Zuko gapes at them. “I—I’m not.”

“Clearly,” says Katara.

And—wait. Let’s back up.

* * *

“Uncle!” A boy currently called Lee shouted on his way back from table three, laden with a tray and a pot, anticipating at least two more customers coming in the door any moment and aware that table five needed a wipe-down before that happened. “We need more lychee!”

The Jasmine Dragon was beautiful. Its offerings were second-to-none, which every citizen of Ba Sing Se to cross its threshold since their recent grand opening heartily agreed upon. Its staff were also top-notch—though customers who knew the shop’s proprietor from his days in the Lower Ring (of which there were few but more than none, as there is nothing that sees the mighty brought low and the lowly rise above their station quite so much as the promise of a good cup of tea) were impressed by the way dear Mushi’s nephew had really stepped up in recent weeks.

Young Lee was a frequent topic of conversation among the Jasmine Dragon’s regulars. He was memorable for many reasons: attentive service, striking eyes, and the fact that he was one of two employees, for a start. His looks didn’t hurt, either, though this far outside the Lower Ring he served as a physical manifestation of the entire city’s shared elephant-rhino in the room.

(It was a shame, a gaggle of grey-haired women with empty nests and little else to do sighed, that there was nothing to be done about his face. He could have been so handsome.)

This rush in the mid-afternoon was nothing compared to the morning shifts. University students in particular lined up around the block to treat themselves to a cup of hot tea kicking off a day or marking the blessed end of an all-nighter. More than one exhausted student had received a free cup of tea and a healthy dose of gentle advice from Mushi after stumbling, bleary-eyed, into his presence.

Lee was less likely to give either—advice or free tea—but he was a good listener.

“And then I found out _he _told _Tou _that Hei-Lin helped me unlock the door, so it was a moot point anyway.” The girl blew her own bangs out of her eyes crankily and set her chin in one hand. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“Mhm,” Lee hummed quietly as he wiped down the table.

The rush of customers had slowed to a trickle, leaving Pang an empty corner of the shop and Lee’s ears—or ear, maybe, but she thought it would be rude to ask if he could hear out of the left one; he tended to keep her on his right side anyway—hers to use.

“I guess it’s a pretty big jump to end a friendship over _one _prank and _one _zebra-cow,” Pang added.

“Yeah,” Lee agreed in his gentle, creaking voice. The table was long since clean; he began to stack empty cups one table over.

“But! What about… what about loyalty? You know? If you ask a friend to keep a secret, does it matter what it’s about? If you’ll betray me over a zebra-cow in the planetarium, you’ll betray me over something else in the future.”

“Hm.” Lee sounded thoughtful.

“I guess…” Pang sighed, “it _was _a stupid move. Friends aren’t friends if they just enable you. Sometimes they have to remind you to keep your head on straight. You’re right. I should apologize to Tou.”

Lee didn’t quite smile. Pang didn’t know if she’d _ever _seen him smile. The side of his mouth twitched, though, and he nodded slightly. He carried away the tray of stacked cups. Pang followed to pay her bill, noting the uneven ends of the boy’s shaggy hair, which tickled his collar and bunched behind his ears like he’d never had a proper haircut. _You can take the boy out of the refugee camp, _Pang supposed.

Lee’s smiling uncle greeted her warmly at the counter.

“And how are you this lovely afternoon?” Mushi asked.

“Much better.” Pang returned his smile.

“I’m happy to hear it. It isn’t every day we get to help a refugee of our own!” Mushi laughed at his own joke.

“University security will catch up sooner or later,” Pang shrugged ruefully. “Thanks again for letting me hide in the kitchen, though. I promise I won’t make a habit of it.”

“Any time! I’m certain my nephew enjoyed the company.” Mushi shot a sly smile through the window into the back room, where Lee was methodically cleaning teacups.

“Thank you as well, Lee! You were a big help today.”

As Pang made her way back into the streets of Ba Sing Se, she could have sworn she heard a grumble in a familiar voice behind her. She was too far away to make it out exactly, but it might have sounded a lot like, _Don’t say anything, Uncle._

She also missed the answering chuckle, but it was there nonetheless.

* * *

Zuko swept the marble steps of the Jasmine Dragon in the orange light of sunset. He could feel its last rays disappear even with his back to the doorway. The fire in him cooled with the oncoming night: a natural cycle like flickering candles, like steady breathing. A week before, this daily ebb and flow of power served as a reminder that he was not what this city thought he was. He was something else; he was _more._

Now, it was simply another sensation. It meant nothing more or less than what it was—same as the wind on his face, the sound of rushing water beneath the footbridge he crossed in the lilac-colored evening, the pebble that rattled in his shoe on the walk back to his and Uncle’s apartment.

“May I help with dinner, Uncle?” Zuko offered. Uncle smiled, nodded, and passed Zuko a cutting board and an onion.

It had been a long time since the luxury of fresh vegetables was so easy to indulge in with such frequency. Even on the ship, they stocked provisions for months at a time and from Earth Kingdom ports. In the Fire Nation, the war produced abundance; elsewhere, scarcity.

There was no war in Ba Sing Se.

There were, however, fresh onions.

* * *

“Table for two, please.”

Bustle of orders, faces, steaming cups. The rhythm falls heavy. It goes light, then heavy again. Footsteps around chairs, pulled out with no warning, arms where arms should not be and hot, hot tea ready to scald. It is lucky that Zuko is light on his feet.

“Could I get a napkin?”

Messes made by other people are a new source of suffering. Tablecloths start out white. They end the day otherwise. He crouches to mop up cold tea. Feet in his face—not new. Not here. Not elsewhere. Zuko may go to the ground, but he never kneels.

“Could I get a refill?”

Tea is endless. Steam wafts up, becomes clouds, becomes rain, becomes river. The well here is trustworthy, but tea has to boil. It boiled as well in the forest and the tenement as it does here. Zuko still cannot tell the difference.

“Could I get your name?”

Lies make the legs unsteady, leave a lingering look, and come out laconic. Memory is a knife. Truth is a pursuant danger. Faces come and go without words to signify. Words put three into one: lies, memory, truth. Zuko’s face does the job well enough on its own.

“I ordered ginseng, not _jasmine_.”

There is honor in humility. There is humility in service. There is service in standing silent while a man spits rudeness through his teeth. What service—that’s the question. Men dare make demands of their lessers. Men dare make lessers of one another. Zuko was one such man, once, which is when time cracks—

Time _cracked._

So did Uncle’s favorite ceramic teapot, the one with the lotus pattern around its belly. The flame beneath flared hot enough to shatter porcelain; a flower cracked in two. Zuko knew enough about tea to feel the shame of ruining something beautiful—more than the pot. The heat surely scalded the leaves inside beyond salvaging.

Uncle’s eyes were not angry. Uncle’s eyes were never angry these days, and that had always been the worst part. The worry in them did nothing to stop the shame.

Shame was colder than anger, at least. Zuko breathed in. He fell heavily back into the rhythm.

* * *

Deep beneath Ba Sing Se, a plan fell into place. A battle was lost; a battle was won. For the first time in the history of the Earth Kingdom, lightning struck underground.

* * *

Zuko saw the smoke first.

He had his own room in the Upper Ring apartment. Gratitude was a sweeter taste than he had known in years, so he sat with it daily: a new color to his meditation. Still, it wasn’t often he spent evenings alone anymore. Uncle’s quiet humming soothed him, a fact which he had steadfastly refused to admit for too long.

It was hard for Zuko to remember _why_ he had wanted to deny that Uncle made him feel safe, feel whole, feel worthy. All of it felt so distant these days. A story that belonged to him, yes, but one that had happened when he was a different person. It had little to do with who he was now.

This evening, he wanted solitude. If Uncle had poked his head into Zuko’s room and invited him for a walk, he would have said yes; it was not the solitude of exile anymore. He was not burning away inside his own body. He was calm. He was still.

He looked out the window.

“Uncle!”

Iroh had not heard his nephew sound so afraid since Azula struck him down in the ghost town far beyond the city. He had not heard Zuko sound so young since the bandages across his eye were fresh. Iroh’s body filled with the cold anticipation of lightning before he even turned around, ready for what would come.

He took in the state of his nephew with one eye a general’s eye—the other, a father’s.

Zuko was on his feet; that was better than it could have been, though he’d seen the young man many times stubbornly fight through injuries that he oughtn’t have tried to. He was not bleeding; this, another sign for the optimist in Iroh, though he knew well that many of the worst wounds left no mark on the skin. His face was a mask of something beyond terror—pure panic. That was, perhaps, worse than if harm had shown itself in any of the other ways.

“Zuko.” Iroh dropped the hand shears he had been using to prune his bonzai. He crossed the room to set gentle palms on Zuko’s shoulders. He could feel his nephew trembling. “What happened?”

Zuko’s mouth twisted in pain. He opened it, but a sound through the open window spoke first.

Wailing. The crash of stone. The crash of metal.

Iroh smelled smoke.

An old, reflexive selfishness whispered that this was wrong, only because if Ba Sing Se were to fall, it should have fallen to _him._ Iroh smothered it like a wayward flame. This was now his city, his home, his future of peace and prosperity. It was where life happened. More importantly, it held all the remaining family he himself cared to hold. The city walls were his own arms: Zuko within them, finally allowing himself the chance to stay.

And now the Fire Nation had broken through—had hurt his nephew, even though they had not found him.

Iroh was not one to panic.

“Breathe,” he reminded the boy shaking apart before him.

Zuko breathed, and Iroh breathed with him. He recognized the rhythms; lessons repeated often enough become habit to the body. It took minutes of slow breaths to calm Zuko enough that he could speak.

His eyes opened—asymmetrical, which had not always been the case, and serious, which had—and his chin tilted in decisive resignation.

“Burn my face,” Zuko said.

_“What?”_

“The other half of my face. You have to burn it.”

“Zuko—” Iroh’s worry turned heavy and metallic. He had a strong stomach, in every sense, but the thought of his nephew’s face burned raw again—by another man he trusted, by _him—_was more than enough to send it roiling.

“I’m not exactly hard to recognize, Uncle,” Zuko spat. He was forgetting his breathing again, Iroh could feel it. “The Fire Nation is here. You think they won’t notice the traitor prince just because he’s wearing an apron and serving them_ tea?”_

“I think you need to keep breathing. Sit down, let me make you something hot to drink.”

“Tea isn’t the solution to everything!” Zuko batted Iroh’s hands off of him and backed away like a frightened, cornered animal. “We thought this city was safe. That’s made us careless. The whole Upper Ring knows what we look like now, and there’s nowhere to run. Don’t you understand, Uncle? You laid siege to it yourself! You _know_ that conquering Ba Sing Se means the Earth Kingdom is as good as beaten. The only thing left to do is hide, and I can’t do that looking like _this!”_

Zuko gestured violently to his scar. Iroh did not know if his nephew had always responded to fear with anger—before Lu Ten’s death, before the banishment, Iroh had loved Zuko, but he had not _known_ him. Not the way he did now.

Now, Zuko bared his teeth against anything sharp enough to cut him. It was reflexive; whether born or bred did not matter.

“It is a foolish wolf-lion that gnaws off its own leg before testing the trap,” Iroh said slowly, palms out.

“This isn’t the time for a _proverb.”_

“Zuko.” Iroh closed his eyes. The shape of Zuko hovered behind his eyelids, blurry and red. “I understand you are afraid, but this will not give you the peace of mind you think it will.”

“Please, Uncle.” Zuko’s voice broke. Something in Iroh broke with it.

“No.”

“Then—then I’ll—”

The quiet crackle of flame reached Iroh’s ears. He opened his eyes to see Zuko’s face lit orange from below, palm cupped around a fire the size of his fist. He looked thin; he looked afraid; he almost looked sick.

The flame went out in a final puff of light when Iroh grabbed Zuko by the wrist. Firmly, gently, he pulled his nephew into an embrace.

“Listen to me,” Iroh said. “I will do whatever is in my power to keep you safe. I will leave this city. I will take us into the desert. I will kneel at my brother’s feet and accept the price of treason before I use fire to harm you.”

“But how—”

“We will figure it out. You have never given up before, and I know this will not be what breaks you. You are stronger than any man I have ever known, my nephew.”

Zuko’s stiff posture softened slowly, laboriously.

“I would be strong enough to handle the pain,” Zuko muttered. There was less heat behind it.

“But you should not have to. Not everything that _can _be endured _must.”_ Iroh pulled away to look him in the eye. Zuko would not meet his gaze; his eyes shone wetly. “And what must be endured should be done with grace, not desperation.”

“What are we going to do?” The question was not a challenge, as his others had been. It was a plea.

“Right now,” Iroh breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. He imagined the smell of blossoms was stronger than the smell of burning. “We mourn. A great loss has been felt today. Tomorrow, we will face what faces us. We will do it with honor.”

* * *

The streets from Jade Park to the Palace Mall were closed to foot- and wagon-traffic. This happened annually for the Earth King’s birthday. It had only been seven months since then—never in living memory had the roads of the Upper Ring had been put to such a purpose as they were today.

The military procession passed directly in front of the Jasmine Dragon. Zuko recalled the pride with which the man who gave Uncle the tea shop had explained that it was located along one of the main thoroughfares to the palace, ensuring frequent clientele of the highest caliber. Today, its clientele swarmed over the tea shop the way they swarmed over colonies, over battlements, over the burned lands and bodies of any nation but theirs.

The thought left a sour tang behind Zuko’s teeth. He didn’t know if it was an unfamiliar disgust with his countrymen, or a too-familiar disgust with himself for thinking such things.

“Lee,” Uncle addressed him loudly, unsubtly, with his false Earth Kingdom name. “I think _you_ should take over brewing today. I won’t be around forever!” He chuckled, but his eyes were hard and serious.

Any other day, he would have guided Zuko out of the kitchen and into a stack of waiting trays like a general leading a man to be court-martialed. Today, his fear of Zuko ruining the tea was weaker than his kindness. Zuko could keep his right side turned to the window, his eyes on the boiling pots, and his hands steady as they measured out leaves.

His ears were the one thing he couldn’t control. The celebratory voices of Fire Nation soldiers burrowed in like earwig-moths. The nobles honored to attend the appointment of the new governor chatted amicably, clicking teeth and teacups like mandibles.

For three years, Zuko had refused to think about the way gossip traveled among the nobility like wildfire—fast, destructive, and aided by military funding.

“Two more cups of ginseng!” Uncle called merrily. Zuko heard the door swing open as he reached for the pot.

“I’m brewing, I’m brewing,” he muttered.

Uncle stood beside him and reached for a pot. It was the white one with a green stripe around the middle, a gift from Zuko the day after he broke the lotus pot.

It was oolong, not ginseng.

Zuko looked up sharply. Uncle’s face was calm.

“If they recognize me,” he said, low enough that Zuko could barely hear him, “go out the window and don’t look back. If they don’t know the Dragon of the West when he’s humbled himself, they won’t know the prince they have not seen in years. The hair makes quite the difference,” he added as if it would make Zuko laugh.

Zuko didn’t laugh. He gave a tight nod of acknowledgement.

“Oh,” Uncle said back at a normal volume, “how foolish of me, this is oolong! Thank you, nephew.”

He took the pot of ginseng from Zuko, poured two cups with the precision of ceremony, and walked back into the ranks of red filling the shop.

* * *

In the days following the fall of Ba Sing Se, soldiers and nobles flooded in from the Fire Nation. Most who were not entertained in the former Earth King’s Palace or the re-purposed guard houses chose to give their patronage to businesses that were, to put it colloquially, under new management.

The Jasmine Dragon was an exception.

It was only an exception for some, of course, but one repeatedly made. The old man who owned the place was properly feudal in his hospitality and made the best tea any of them had tasted since leaving the shores of the Fire Nation (none would admit it was better than anything from the homeland as well, but they knew). His nephew, on the other hand, was trouble.

More accurately, he was troubling.

The old man (none would admit they had stooped so low as to learn the name of an Earth Kingdom teamaker, let alone granted him the respect his age would have earned had he been their countryman, but they knew) had finally let the boy out of the kitchen, seemingly content he wasn’t about to spit in the faces of their distinguished guests or single-handedly start a rebellion. These guests did not appreciate the way the teamaker’s nephew refused to smile, to speak when spoken to, or to stop making such unnerving eye contact all the time. Some even came close to teaching him a lesson.

None actually followed through.

In her old regiment, Lieutenant Jiaxin had earned a reputation for having a short fuse. This was, at a minimum, the third most significant reason she had been granted the honor of joining the first wave of infantry on the ground in newly-conquered Ba Sing Se. As a being fueled primarily by rage, she was quick to spy the trait in others. The young waiter’s general demeanor was a slap in the face personified, and she didn’t share his uncle’s faith that he wouldn’t try something very stupid _very_ soon.

When the little rat stepped on her foot, she grabbed him by the collar.

He barely flinched, so she lit her other hand on fire. The boy’s eyes flicked to the flame. He didn’t stare in horror or fear or even disgust like most displaced Earth Kingdom commoners—and Jiaxin knew he was one, could practically smell the refugee camp on him, no doubt about that. His reaction would have looked like nothing to anyone watching, but Jiaxin saw it and knew the boy knew what he was doing.

He met her gaze and turned his face.

The scar across his eye, cheek, and ear was ugly. It was old. She got a good view of it in startling contrast to the unblemished half when he faced her almost dead-on, just the slightest tilt that put his left side directly in her line of fire.

_Go ahead,_ his tight jaw and tighter eyes said. _Strike me again._

The wordless accusation in the action fell heavily in Jiaxin’s stomach, stoking her anger but freezing her limbs. She wasn’t the one who had put this mark on a teenager’s face. A child’s, actually, she realized unwillingly when the corner of her mind that remembered kindness did a quick arithmetic: age of the boy minus age of the scar equalled a solution that scorched black like Earth Kingdom farmland. (Neither Jiaxin nor her fellows would admit to feeling guilt over the orders they carried out daily, but they all saw scarred children too often not to know.)

She let him go.

Not without a shove that sent him stumbling, of course. The half-bend of his spine when he found his balance again would have been perfect for turning the movement into a low, respectful bow. The teamaker’s nephew caught Jiaxin’s eyes, then spun away before straightening, arms still firm by his sides.

No one was sure just who had learned the lesson.

* * *

On days like today, Zuko could almost imagine the Fire Nation had never brought down the Wall. He could almost imagine a lot of things: that the constant weight of fear would ever go away, that the war really didn’t exist, that his name was Lee and always had been.

On days like today, the soldiers and courtiers in red had better things to do than drink in Earth Kingdom tea shops. It might have been coincidence; it might have been mysterious business that required every off-duty guard in the city to be in attendance. Zuko did not know and did not want to find out.

He had peace, while it lasted. An afternoon, an hour, the next five minutes—he was going to appreciate that peace and nobody was going to stop him, or else.

Alright, _fine,_ the woman sobbing into her tea at table seven wouldn’t face his wrath. Maybe a refill would help her quiet down, though.

“Oh,” she said when he poured her fresh tea to the brim. “Thank you, I’m sorry, I’m just—”

“It’s okay,” Zuko replied as reassuringly as he could. He didn’t have much practice. “Do you want—”

He was going to say _an egg custard,_ which Uncle had just begun ordering in bulk from a baker in the Middle Ring.

“Yes! Thank you. It’s so hard with _them_ everywhere. I’m afraid to talk in my own house. It must be worse for you, since those… those—” She looked frustrated at her own inability to think of a word terrible enough for the fighters and first citizens of the Fire Nation. Zuko shifted uncomfortably. “Since you’re so close to the palace.”

“We get by.”

“That’s all any of us can do these days,” she agreed solemnly, and promptly burst into tears again.

“So, uh,” Zuko said after a few seconds, “do you want an egg custard, or?”

“It’s good to know people are still kind,” she said thickly through all the fluids coming from her face. “I almost— It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but I sort of expected all the goodness in the world to go away when the Avatar died.”

Several things happened in quick succession.

The teapot in Zuko’s hand hit the ground and shattered. Hot tea soaked into his shoes. The woman cried out, apologizing hysterically. The kitchen door slammed open. The wall struck Zuko’s back. The world went fuzzy at the edges.

“Young man?” A voice he didn’t recognize and a face he couldn’t focus on swam into his awareness. “Are you alright?”

A hand grabbed onto him, a voice made demands of him, and a figure lurched way, _way_ too far into his personal space. Uncle’s sudden appearance with a hand on his wrist was all that stopped Zuko from throwing fire in the stranger’s face.

The concerned customer shuffled away from Zuko and out the door, leaving a half-full teacup and a generous tip.

“Nephew,” Uncle said calmly, but Zuko was already back upright, leaning over the table. His vision narrowed to the crying woman; nothing else mattered.

“The Avatar?” Zuko croaked.

“You didn’t know?” The woman sounded aghast. She put one hand over her mouth. The other reached out in sympathy toward Zuko’s face. She flinched before touching him and pulled back. “I’m so sorry. I thought everyone had heard. The soldiers gloat about it so much, I just assumed—”

“Perhaps you should go home early today, nephew,” Uncle suggested quietly, laying a hand on Zuko’s shoulder.

Zuko shrugged it off.

“What happened to him?”

“Princess Azula.” She paused. “That’s the Fire Lord’s daughter—”

“I know who she is,” Zuko snapped. His knees felt softer than the egg custard he’d offered her. “What did she do to the Avatar?”

“She— I wasn’t there, but the papers—the new ones, the propaganda, it all says she struck him with lightning. That even— Even at his most powerful, he wasn’t strong enough to face the Fire Nation.”

“His most powerful,” Zuko repeated weakly.

“His eyes and tattoos were glowing. They say,” the woman’s voice turned bitter, “that even the Dai Li were frozen in awe, but Princess Azula kept her head. The full might of the Avatar couldn’t faze her. So even if we sit and wait around for a new one, what then? It took a hundred years for him to show up, and the war is as good as lost now—”

Her voice faded into white noise like distant running water. Zuko could hear nothing over the erratic pounding in his head: Azula. Lightning. The Avatar. Azula. Eyes glowing. The Avatar. Azula. Lightning. The Avatar. Lightning. Glowing. Lightning. Azula. The Avatar. Azula. The Avatar.

_There won’t be a new one,_ Zuko wanted to say. His jaw was locked as if a live current ran through him. He couldn’t grit the words out between his clenched teeth. It was better that way; it wouldn’t do him any favors to try to explain why he knew more about the Avatar than nearly anyone else alive.

A vision of the airbender boy at his strongest and most vulnerable, lit up with the legacy of all his past lives, swept over Zuko.

The Avatar State. Lightning. Gone.

Of _course _it was Azula. Of course she destroyed Zuko’s one chance at going home again—

But did he really still think he _had _a chance? What had he been doing, pouring tea in the middle of Ba Sing Se, nameless, hiding from the war like a coward and hiding from his sister like he was nine years old again? Where was his honor now? Where was the celebratory homecoming he had once truly believed his father would give him _now?_ They must have been in the same place, if they were anywhere at all—as ever, forever, they lay with the Avatar.

The world was fuzzy and soundless, but Zuko was dimly aware of Uncle sending him home. His feet traced the pattern of the streets between tea shop and apartment. The stairs groaned like dying men under his weight.

Zuko collapsed onto his bed. At some point, the sun set. The moon did not take its place. Time slipped past him.

It was strange, this sudden emptiness that had opened in his chest like a sinkhole. A cold, painful absence rippled all through him like a blow to the solar plexus—it reminded him of the news of Lu Ten’s death. Of the too-bright morning after he saw his mother for the last time. Of watching the last mountain peak of the Fire Nation disappear beyond the horizon, flat as a painting with his left eye packed in gauze.

If Zuko were honest, he had stopped believing he could ever regain his honor months ago, after he and Uncle ran from Azula’s ship under cover of those first spring blossoms. He had agonized over the thought, then run from it, then, at some point, started seeing the life he was currently living as more important than the one that had been taken from him. There was peace in that. Contentment, even. Perhaps, eventually, there could have been joy.

So what new grief was this?

Zuko stared at the ceiling. Confusion bubbled up like anger. He closed his eyes and dove into the mouth of the hollowness, hoping it would tell him its name before it swallowed him whole.

Soon, sleep took him too.

_The South Pole._

_The snow lies flat around his feet, the land flatter. No one stands guard over the village. There is nothing between Zuko and his prize—there is nothing at all._

_Though he cannot see it, he knows exactly what strikes him on the back of the head: the peasant’s boomerang. The ice sheet becomes grass and the waterbender freezes him in place, ice crawling up Zuko’s legs, growing like crystal around his arms, his throat, water filling his mouth so cold it burns. He takes a breath he should not be able to take, perhaps his last._

_His own breath turns inside out, turns against him, turns to wind throwing him into the air like a trebuchet._

_The Avatar._

_“Do you think we could have been friends too?” the boy asks as he launches Zuko through a wall. The wall puts up no resistance, and Zuko is on the other side of it, certain he must get back. He cannot be found here._

_Soldiers of Pohuai Stronghold surround him. They will know him in an instant if he stops moving. He has lost his mask. He fights barefaced, like a traitor._

_He severs spearheads with his swords, whirls around and around. Next to him, the Avatar circles the soldiers with identical movements. His staff spins. Zuko’s dao spin. There is one gate between them and freedom, between Zuko and home._

_Zuko puts blades to the Avatar’s throat. The Avatar is wanted alive, so if Zuko threatens his life— But the boy turns around in his arms. Zuko sees his face. It isn’t Aang._

_Lee. Real Lee, the Earth Kingdom boy whose name Zuko stole before he knew it was another of his many stolen things._

_“No! I hate you!”_

_Zuko rides out of town on an ostrich-horse, equally stolen. The weary, hungry villagers who line the road eye him warily. The Water Tribe siblings are there. Katara. Sokka. The earthbender he met when Uncle was hurt. Her eyes are blank, but she glares at him as the Avatar’s other friends do—nothing but blame._

_As he rides, laughter comes from behind him. High, mocking, familiar._

_He hears the crackle of lightning and the crash of thunder. He reaches out a hand to take the lightning into himself, to give it back, and now he is again on a flat sheet of ice. Not a landscape—a bridge._

_The moon reappears in the sky, red as blood. The Ocean Spirit pulls Zhao into its fist. Zuko’s hand is still outstretched, but Zhao pulls away, would rather die than take anything Zuko could give. Zuko keeps reaching._

_The hand before him is smaller, younger, with a blue arrow on the back lighting up as bright as the moonlight was on the water when he sank the fleet of ships. This hand reaches back, but now Zuko is the one pulling away._

_Uncle’s voice warns him as if from a great distance. Zuko knows, _feels_ himself fail as the lightning goes straight through his heart—_

Zuko woke with a shout, flailing so wildly he tangled himself in his bedding.

Panic surged through him. He summoned flames to his hands and burned the blanket apart. His chest rose and fell like the time he nearly drowned in dark, freezing water. Outside the window, the moon was full.

* * *

“How can we help you gentlemen today?”

“I think it’s how _we_ can help _you._ Help you keep this lovely tea shop standing, that is. Nice decor, but unfortunately not up to code.”

_“What_ code—”

“Oh, thank you for telling us. May I ask, what about our humble shop does not meet the city’s standards?”

“No portrait of the Fire Lord, for one thing. Wouldn’t want people to start thinking you’re the rebellious type, now would we?”

“That’s not a law!”

“Please, forgive my nephew. He only means that this is the first we have heard of it.”

“Makes sense. You’re locals, right? I guess you wouldn’t know how to honor your nation if it bit you in the— Woah, back off, kid. Old man, get your kitchen boy in line, or I’ll do it for you.”

_“Lee.”_

“Grr.”

“Did… did the kid just growl at me? Did you just _growl_ at me?”

“Perhaps we could discuss these codes over a cup of calming tea. Have you tried our jasmine blend?”

“We’re not here to drink your tea. We’re here to get you… what’s the word? Compliant. Otherwise, someone might start to get _suspicious,_ and then who knows what could happen.”

“Indeed. I ought to pass this on to our neighbors, then.”

“Oh, don’t worry about _that._ You’re our last stop. You know the Yans, from down the block?”

“The couple who run the bookstore, yes! Such lovely people. They have a fine collection of earthbending scrolls.”

“Had, you mean. Shop burned down the other night.”

“I see.”

“Let me guess. They didn’t put up a portrait of the Fire Lord?”

“They sold banned documents, actually. Peddling traitorous ideas. Did _you _ever go to that bookshop, boy?”

“I—”

“Thank you again for taking time out of your busy day to keep us informed. Are you certain I cannot tempt you to a cup of tea?”

“No. I mean, yes. Yes, I’m sure. Get that portrait up. And watch yourself.”

“Have a pleasant afternoon!”

“Uncle.”

“Very kind people, the Yans. Do you remember them, nephew?”

“Lychee for Min, green for Shi. He usually ordered a second cup before she was done with the first.”

“I’m glad. You’re getting better at remembering people. That is an important skill to cultivate.”

“Uncle! We can’t just stand around talking about how _nice_ they were. The soldiers burned their shop down!”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“It is unfortunate. What do you think we should do?”

“I— Help them, somehow. Or, or stop it from happening to anyone else. To _us.”_

“The man you growled at was more than happy to explain how to stop it from happening to us. Is that your plan?”

“We are _not_ putting up a portrait of my— Of the Fire Lord.”

“Why not?”

“Why _not?_ What do you mean, why not?”

“You were once quite accustomed to portraits of the Fire Lord. What’s different now?”

“We’re not in the _Fire Nation_ now! I— Ugh. I’m going for a walk.”

“The park on Marble Boulevard is very lovely. Nephew! Do you have your keys?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I said yes, Uncle!”

“I’ll have dinner ready when you return!”

“Don’t wait up!”

“But I’m making dumplings!”

“...Fine!”

* * *

He had the dream again.

* * *

The sight of a face familiar from before the Wall fell was becoming a rare occurrence in the Jasmine Dragon.

Every time it happened, Uncle smiled like he had just run into a long-lost member of the family—if he had come from a _very_ different family, that is. He called the guest by name more often than not, which constantly surprised Zuko; how did he remember so many of them? How did he even find out their names in the first place, when all he did was pour tea?

Zuko shook his head. Uncle did far more than pour tea for the people who came to his shop. Even as their regulars became more and more frequently Fire Nation—not only soldiers, now, but craftsmen and entertainers and merchants who filled Ba Sing Se like it was just another colony—his hospitality did not waver. Though, again, a friendly Earth Kingdom face was likely to earn a reception even warmer than usual.

“Pang!” Uncle boomed with genuine delight as a young woman approached the counter. “It has been too long! How are your studies?”

This one, at least, Zuko remembered: the girl who once hid in the kitchen for an hour and then talked his ear off. Hard to forget. He glanced up from the dish basin to send Pang a quick nod of greeting.

He did a double take at the look on her face.

“Do I know you?” she asked Uncle. She sounded baffled and more than a little uncomfortable.

“My sincerest apologies,” Uncle replied humbly. “There was a young woman named Pang who visited us from time to time, and you resemble her very much.”

“No,” she shook her head. “My name is Pang. But I’ve never been here before.”

Her green eyes darted around the shop. Zuko set down the cup and leaned through the window into the main room, just over Uncle’s shoulder.

“You’re an astronomy student at the University of Ba Sing Se,” he said. Her eyes landed on his face—and did not waver over the scar. She had seen him before, then. Zuko was sure this was the same girl, but there was something _off_ about her.

“I’m a student,” she said haltingly, “but I study… I study geology. I’m sorry, I think I’m in the wrong—”

“The zebra-cow in the planetarium?” he prompted. Uncle glanced at him warningly, but Zuko ignored whatever message he was trying to convey.

“The what?” Pang asked. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear nervously. Her hand shook. “No, that can’t be right.”

“You hid in our kitchen through the whole afternoon rush,” Zuko said.

“Nephew,” Uncle murmured.

“I’ve never been here before! I haven’t, I—”

“And you’re not a geology student,” Zuko pressed.

She was clearly lying, and clearly nervous about it, but why? There weren’t any soldiers in the shop today. He and Uncle had compromised on a flame insignia pennant over the counter, so there wasn’t even a standing threat to burn the place to the ground hanging over them. It was suspicious.

Given how their lives had been going for the last few months, Zuko was not exactly fond of _suspicious._

“I’m… I don’t—” She stammered. Her pupils were wide and dark, more than they had been when she walked in, Zuko was sure.

“It wasn’t just the prank that got you in big trouble. With how often the planetarium is in use,” he continued, leaning so far out from the kitchen he considered hopping over the sill, “you said, because of all the phenomena this summer—”

“—for the first time in nine hundred years,” Pang said suddenly. Her voice shifted oddly in register, as if reciting a speech she’d forgotten she had memorized. Her eyes were wide and blank. “A total solar eclipse in the same season as the Great Co— The—”

Pang choked. Blotchy red crept from her neck across her face.

Uncle was around the side of the counter before Zuko could blink. Zuko himself was over the edge of the window and in the main room of the shop, also before he could blink. Uncle’s steady hands hovered near Pang’s shoulders as she gasped for air.

“Are you alright?” Uncle asked with alarm. Pang nodded, a deep, shaky breath finally clearing her airway.

“What were you going to say?” Zuko asked.

“That’s enough!” Uncle’s voice was stern. Zuko froze; the air in the shop felt a short spike in temperature. “Would you fetch our guest some water, please?” He asked, calmer.

Zuko glanced from the girl taking deep, grateful breaths and staring sightlessly around the room, back to Uncle’s grim face. He nodded.

When he returned with a cup of fresh water, Pang was sitting calmly at the nearest table. Her hands were steady and her pupils were a less unnerving size.

“Thank you,” she said kindly. “I have trouble breathing sometimes this time of year. It’s all the pollen. What’s your name?”

Zuko knew it wasn’t the pollen.

“Lee.”

“I’m Pang.”

“Nice to meet you,” he gritted out between his teeth. To all appearances, the last five minutes were gone from the girl’s head entirely. “Can I get you some tea?”

He took her order—the same as it had been before the Wall fell, before whatever happened to her that made her choke half to death on the word _comet._

And no mistake, that was what she had tried to say. It had been a topic of courtly conversation for as long as Zuko could remember, how great an _honor_ it was to live to see the return of Sozin’s Comet, the prodigious source of the Fire Nation’s first sure step in the war. An omen, certainly, of their impending victory.

_Our,_ Zuko corrected himself. Our victory.

The day after his grandfather’s funeral, on Zuko’s first full day as Crown Prince, he stood at the foot of Sozin’s enormous tapestry and stared for a long time. He didn’t remember what it was he meant to do in the first place—imagine himself there, maybe? Wonder what the weavers would surround his own image with, the way the comet arced red and sweeping over Sozin’s head like a bloodstain? Whatever it was that went through his ten-year-old mind, something else stuck with him.

He thought about that tapestry a lot, years later. He learned truths about the slaughtered airbenders that his history lessons had never prepared him for, alone in a metal cabin swaying on the sea. He stepped over their bones, walked in the places where they once lived.

Zuko told himself, over and over until it became as sure a mantra as the other reassurances that let him sleep at night, that what had happened in the past meant nothing beyond how it could help him accomplish his goals in the present. The dead had no use for honor; Zuko did.

It had been months, at least, since he had thought about that. With the loss of the Avatar, the Air Nomads were truly gone. His great-grandfather’s wish, realized at last.

“Here,” Zuko said quietly. He set Pang’s steaming tea on the table. She thanked him.

The dead had no use for honor. If he were to return to the Air Temples, would he still say something like that?

Zuko didn’t think so.

* * *

He had the dream again.

* * *

“Would you take out the dishwater?” Uncle asked, gesturing to the basin.

Zuko nodded. He reached down to grab the container in front of him, carried it through the store room, pushed the back door open with his hip, and heaved the load forward in a familiar motion.

Usually, this movement was accompanied by the splash of dirty water in the alley, which would soon enough drain through the grate in the narrow, paved road behind the Jasmine Dragon. This time, Zuko felt the weight slip out of his hands and heard a startling clatter a second later.

He blinked. He looked at the ground, littered with ceramic shards; then at his hands, empty; then, he peered in through the open window into the kitchen.

Sitting on the counter was the dish basin.

Scattered in the alley were the pieces of the teapot Zuko had just thrown several feet onto flat stone.

“Um,” Zuko said.

“What was that?” came Uncle’s voice through the window.

“Nothing, Uncle!”

* * *

He had the dream again.

This night, the restless emptiness it left behind sent him wandering into the main room of the apartment. He expected to be alone with the waning moonlight. Instead, he came face-to-face with Uncle’s back. He was at the counter, pouring tea.

“Have a cup,” he said, turning toward Zuko with a tired smile. “It will help you sleep.”

“Sorry,” Zuko said. “Did I wake you?”

Uncle only smiled.

“Do you remember our first few weeks at sea?”

Zuko was startled by the question, seemingly out of nowhere. His hand closed unconsciously around the warm clay cup Uncle gave him.

“Not very well,” Zuko admitted.

He remembered brief pockets of stillness with an almost uncanny clarity: the ship leaving port, the Western Air Temple, that first supply stop when the merchant laughed in his face for being thirteen and requisitioning provisions for two dozen men—the way he stopped laughing when Zuko told him his name. The rest was a haze of itchy bandages and wobbly legs and dusty texts in candlelight crawling like insects across his feverish, half-darkened vision.

“You did not sleep well then, either,” Uncle said in a massive understatement.

Zuko doubted he slept more than an hour at a time until the bandages came off, and then only after Uncle agreed to resume his firebending training. He drank the tea and waited. Either Uncle would continue, or he would sit silently with Zuko until he slept again. He was too tired to chase the thread of conversation.

“I didn’t know,” Uncle continued at last, “that you were keeping yourself awake all night. You fell asleep on deck one day. Do you remember?”

Zuko shrugged. Uncle had reminded him at least once a week for months afterward, nagging at him to get some rest, but Zuko couldn’t be sure if he actually recalled passing out in the middle of a sentence while shouting at the helmsman or if the memory was built from pieces of Uncle’s retelling.

“I carried you to your room. I was going to leave, but then I heard your voice. I thought you’d woken up.” Uncle’s voice was a low, soothing constant. Zuko was in near danger of nodding off then and there. “You hadn’t. You were having a nightmare.”

Zuko didn’t remember the specifics, but he could guess. He nodded.

“I stayed with you that evening, but I knew you wouldn’t want me to hover. Your room was far from mine. Over the engine and the crew, I couldn’t hear a sound from you. I would lie awake and wonder if you were still running yourself into the ground, if you were visited by bad dreams, or if you were finally allowing yourself time to rest.”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said again.

“No, my nephew. I’m not telling you this to make you feel ashamed. I’m telling you so that you can understand. I am _happy _to be woken up in the middle of the night, because it is better to hear your suffering and do what I can to help than to hear nothing at all.”

The last leaves of Zuko’s tea were dark and scattered in the bottom of his cup. He didn’t see the future in them, but he sat with it anyway.

“Although,” Uncle added with a yawn, “it would be best of all to hear some snoring now and then.”

“I don’t snore,” Zuko grouched reflexively.

Uncle chuckled. Zuko felt the corner of his own mouth twitch.

“I’m going back to bed now,” Zuko said at last. “Thank you… for the tea.”

“Thank you for the company.”

Zuko slept, and he slept until morning.

* * *

The address of the bakery was written on a slip of paper in Uncle’s careful handwriting. It wasn’t much help, considering Zuko had no idea where he was.

“Excuse me,” Zuko addressed a young man hawking ‘exotic’ fruit—which just looked like an assortment of dried up ocean kumquats to him—as he looked around the market alley. “How do I get to the Middle Ring from here?”

“Screw your head on better next time, kid,” the man laughed. “You’re already there.”

“Oh.”

Zuko’s brow furrowed in irritation. He didn’t think he deserved to be laughed at for his confusion.

He’d walked through the gate Uncle told him to and did a double take, certain there must have been some impossible feat of earthbending involved to deposit him directly into the Lower Ring. The buildings were crowded where they weren’t half-burnt, and the people more so. The motley painted houses and clotheslines like festival flags, which Zuko remembered from the time or two he’d had cause to visit the Middle Ring in the last months, were gone. In their place were layers of soot, muting colors and voices alike.

“Need anything else? You’re in the way of my customers.”

There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the crowded street clamoring to try dehydrated kumquat. Zuko shook himself; he could almost feel soot and despair settling over his skin.

“Yeah, can you point me to this address?” He handed the fruit seller Uncle’s paper.

“Oh hey, the Paddling Turtleduck! Just around that corner, take two lefts and you’re there. They have the best mooncakes in the city. Make sure you try a couple.”

“I’m picking up an order,” he snapped, “not here to buy mooncakes.”

Zuko went around the corner, took two lefts, and was there.

“Order for the Jasmine Dragon,” he grumbled to the woman in the flour-dusted apron. A smell hit him just as she was wrapping up the basket. “And… two mooncakes. Please.”

With an order of egg custards under his arm and a bag of cakes in his hand, Zuko watched the Middle Ring go about its business. He had long ago made a habit of memorizing the places he went to the best of his ability: entrances, exits, shadowy corners.

The corners of Ba Sing Se were particularly shadowy, and not particularly empty.

The Middle Ring was overflowing; it looked ready to collapse under its own weight. The extra bodies couldn’t be accounted for by former citizens of the Upper Ring alone, Zuko thought. If this place could be so changed, he wondered what the place that had been his— that had been _where he lived_ in the Lower Ring had become.

He made it back to the Jasmine Dragon and dropped the basket heavily onto the counter. The shop was mostly empty. It had opened barely an hour ago, and the rush was either over or about to begin.

“Here are the egg custards,” he said to Uncle’s smiling face. “I hope the delivery boy gets well soon.”

Zuko meant it as a passive-aggressive complaint about the errand; some of his less pleasant habits were making a resurgence these days. But he felt a twinge of remorse, and then a twinge of hope: he did wish the best for the delivery boy, honestly. Missing a day of work could really deal a blow to someone without much to start with—he had learned as much at Pao’s shop.

The thought of the Lower Ring sent Zuko’s mood spiraling again.

“What do you have there?” Uncle asked, interrupting Zuko’s retreat to brood in the kitchen.

“Oh. I bought some mooncakes.” He dropped the bag into Uncle’s hand.

“Thank you, nephew!” Uncle said, pulling a small plate and a dessert knife out of thin air to cut his cake into quarters. He eagerly ate the first piece, already eyeing the bag containing the other cake.

“Don’t eat _both_ of them!” Zuko said. He snatched the bag back. “I was going to save one for later.”

“Don’t dawdle, or you may find your cake has gone stale before you allow yourself to eat it,” Uncle said through a mouthful of bean paste as if it were a piece of sage advice and not a ploy to steal Zuko’s breakfast. “Joy should be indulged in wherever and whenever you find it.”

In response, Zuko shoved the entire second mooncake into his mouth.

Uncle laughed his deep, throaty laugh as Zuko chewed slowly and awkwardly. He glared, unable to speak and irritated that he had no one to blame but himself.

His first customer of the day asked if he’d been stung in the mouth by a mosquito-wasp. Zuko nodded angrily.

“And how does rashness taste?” Uncle asked a few minutes later as he brewed another pot of ginseng. Zuko was in the middle of prying the remains of the cake from his teeth with his tongue.

“A lot like lotus seeds,” he replied. Uncle laughed again.

That night, the clouds were so thick the moon might as well have packed up and gone home.

It was a perfect night for moving undetected. There was no reason Zuko could not be seen in the Middle or Lower Rings, exactly—he had his false passport, was well-known enough in the city by now that someone other than Uncle would be able to vouch for him, and didn’t intend to stir up trouble. Yet he felt more comfortable in the shadows on a trip like this.

Uncle would not approve, for a start. He would want Zuko to get a full night’s rest before they opened the shop in the morning. He would want Zuko to find contentment in brewing tea, unworried about who was drinking it and what colors they wore, what they might have done before walking into the Jasmine Dragon—what they might do after they left.

_Life happens wherever you are._ Uncle had been right about that. Life happened. Life was happening. But it was happening _to_ Zuko, which was a state of affairs that chafed against him like shackles.

If he wanted agency in his own life again—presuming he’d ever had it to begin with, but that thought led down a road darker than this cloud-covered night—he needed to know.

He needed to know every inch of this new Ba Sing Se. His whole life, Zuko had been steps behind Azula. He’d spent years at a dead sprint trying to catch up, still always tripping over failure. Here he was, seemingly away from her at last, until she came and tore this city of his down from the inside out without even bothering to find him and gloat about it. That was new: in the past, she had hurt him because she enjoyed it.

Apparently Zuko wasn’t even worth her cruelty anymore.

But as much as it burned to admit it, she was still worth his attention. He had to know what else she’d done, what else she’d taken from him. Home, honor, family, love—and now Ba Sing Se, a city that, by rights, ought not to have belonged to either of them.

The claws of an angry pygmy puma nearly took out Zuko’s remaining unscarred eye. He shook himself and ducked out of the alley. _Focus._

There was a fact of life that had served Zuko well as a lonely child, inventing solitary games to see how many guards he could sneak past without getting caught: people rarely looked up. It had served him well again as a traitor and then as a thief.

It made the jump from a Middle Ring rooftop onto the uneven, scorched stone of the inner wall and the careful journey along the ceiling of the gate, over the heads of Fire Nation soldiers yawning through their night shift, swift and easy. The other side, though, proved problematic: there was no rooftop in the Lower Ring waiting to catch him.

Zuko dangled by one hand from a deep crack in the wall. His fingers were already beginning to ache. In the dark, he couldn’t tell where the empty air below him ended and the ground began. Wait much longer, and his swinging legs would catch the guards’ attention.

He breathed, swung himself past the edge of the stone gate, and let go.

The ground resolved itself out of the darkness just in time for Zuko to fall into a roll. There would be bruises all along the backs of his shoulders come morning, he could already tell, but nothing was broken.

Well. None of his bones, anyway. As Zuko got to his feet and looked at what had been the Lower Ring, he understood that Ba Sing Se was more broken than he’d thought.

He walked through the streets in a haze—literally, given the number of fires filling the air with an omnipresent grey curtain of smoke. There was raucous shouting one street over as an unrecognizable shell of a building collapsed in on itself in a burst of dust and ash. A small group, faceless in the dark, huddled around the flames flickering inside a large metal drum.

Zuko was seized by the fear of being seen. He didn’t know what he would do if he met the eyes of anyone who lived here—didn’t know what he would do if he recognized them.

Moving by rooftop was faster, anyway. Zuko got a running start, took a leg up from the edge of the burning drum—“Hey, watch it!”—and grabbed the sloped shingles of the nearest roof. They were unevenly laid; while Zuko kept his footing easily enough, he knew that when the heavy clouds overhead chose to break open the roof beneath him would leak like a sieve.

_Not your problem._ Zuko hesitated, surprised by the shame welling in his chest at the thought. _None of your business,_ he amended.

He reached the peak of the roof and felt the same vertigo as he had upon entering the Middle Ring, momentarily certain he could not possibly be where he thought he was. Dead ahead, where the great Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se had once risen around the city as if to meet the sky itself, Zuko only saw darkness. It was framed on either side by pillars of stone—No.

That _was_ the Wall. In pieces.

Below him, a gruff voice shouted something unkind to the people warming themselves around the drum. Zuko peered down and saw the spiked armor of a footsoldier around the posture of a man indulging himself a bit too much while on-duty.

Zuko tensed, but the group eking out an existence in the alley seemed too used to such treatment to give the bully the satisfaction of a response. Zuko moved on.

In the starless night, broken buildings jutted like monstrous teeth around him. People wandered the squirrel-rabbit warren of the streets below, silent more than not, like the stories of lost souls in the Spirit World that Uncle had told in the galley on nights when the ocean was still. He had held the crew in rapt attention then; he had held Zuko’s attention too, as much as he was too proud to show it.

A low voice drifted from an open window in the tenement under Zuko’s feet, crooning the start of a familiar melody.

“Winter, spring, summer and fall…”

For a moment, Zuko was in that tenement building. He was there, and he was on the deck of a ship as a damp wind carried the last chill of winter, and he was in a cave in a forest hearing an old man hum as he brewed tea like he was grateful for the privilege. He was eight, learning to purse his lips and push air out the bell of a tsungi horn bigger than he was, hearing a kindly laugh and the first compliment that had come his way in months, _Finding power in your breath is a valuable skill, Prince Zuko, and from the sound of it, you have quite a lot._

There was a harsh series of _thuds_ and another voice, “Shut up!”

The deep baritone shifted out of song and into a string of curses that would have made the boatswain who’d worked on Zuko’s ship for six months—before resigning with a tirade that had taught fourteen-year-old Zuko several new and handy phrases—blush bright red.

Zuko almost laughed. Before more than a huff could escape his lips, he heard a shift in the air behind him.

He whipped around, arms extended to block and attack. The rooftop was empty.

_Better keep moving._ He leapt to the next roof. It wasn’t hard. The Lower Ring was still crowded, buildings shoved so close together they propped one another up. Too close: fire could jump between them, just as Zuko had, and take out a neighborhood with a single spilled candle.

_It’s not candles doing the work around here anymore._

At the sight of two off duty soldiers sharing a drink in front of the burned-out shell of what Zuko recognized as the only shop within walking distance of their old apartment that sold at-all trustworthy fresh fish, it clicked: why this place was so confusingly familiar.

Two scenes, layered together, something not-right about each of them: the Lower Ring, as it had been; and the amalgamation of a dozen ports-of-call, spread out over the colonized coast of the Earth Kingdom—little towns stubbornly clinging to cliff sides, surviving on nothing but spite.

Well, nothing but spite and the sea. The Lower Ring now, soot-coated and worryingly empty of both people and sound, might as well have been a pirate cove with no pirates. A port with no ocean. Nothing to subsist on. Hardly any life left, except what couldn’t be scraped away on the first pass.

“Hey, kid! Stop right there.”

Zuko flinched, but the voice ringing out in the street below wasn’t directed at him. One of the off-duty guards—supposedly off-duty, anyway, though that was unlikely to stop them from flexing what petty authority they thought they had—advanced unsteadily toward a girl in a brown dress.

“What?” She was trying to hide fear in her voice and not doing a very good job. Zuko crouched to the edge of the roof for a better look.

“I think you’re out past curfew, little miss.” The soldier’s words slurred.

Zuko’s fingers clenched hard around the edge of the roof. _She has to be at least my age. And what curfew gets enforced in the Lower Ring?_

“I’m on my way home.”

“Should have thought of that before sundown.” The soldier reached for the girl’s arm.

Zuko, as he was wont to do, didn’t think.

His feet struck the earth between the soldier and the girl. Zuko knew the weak spots in Fire Nation armor; two blows to the man sent him sprawling. His companion stood, squinting in the dark. Then, her eyes flicked past Zuko and widened.

“Get back here! Get— Aw, forget it. You, though, _you’re_ under arrest.”

Zuko heard footsteps fade around the corner. He didn’t need to turn back to know the girl had run the moment the soldiers were distracted. Good instincts.

He watched the soldier he’d struck struggle to his feet and the other pick up her spear. Zuko readied a fighting stance.

He hesitated. _Actually, I really don’t want to deal with this._

A nearby window, long-since missing its glass, was a perfect hand- and foot-hold as Zuko launched himself up onto another roof. Below, twin grunts of enraged confusion told him the soldiers hadn’t been watching carefully enough—he’d jumped too fast, black clothes in the black night, for them to see which way he’d gone.

_If people like _that _are all that’s keeping Ba Sing Se in its place—_

The near-silent whistle told Zuko that something was coming toward him very, very quickly. It was barely a second of warning, not enough to get out of the way as a hand made of stone wrapped itself around his ankle. Then, movement near the edge of the roof: a figure in dark robes and a broad hat.

Zuko focused a small blast of fire out as he brought the side of his hand down hard on the stone cuff holding him to the roof. It shattered, but the flash would alert the figure instantly, as well as anyone else who might be watching.

He ran.

The boy in black was quick. He was quiet. He would have made a good recruit if he weren’t a criminal.

Or a firebender, of course. That might make training with the Dai Li problematic.

Although, the city had changed dramatically in the last few weeks. Perhaps a firebending unit was inevitable. Still: criminal. That was important. Catch, reeducate, release.

Tianqi was still working on the first part.

The boy ducked silently flying stone with startling precision. He slid down sloping rooftops and leapt gaps between buildings as if he had no fear of falling. No fear of anything. Tianqi’s grandmother had put her faith in fortunetellers in the later part of her life, which his father had scoffed at. Tianqi had agreed.

Now, he briefly wondered if he ought to reassess that position. This boy certainly moved like he knew the landing-place of not only his own feet, but the stones attempting to trip them as well, before either had even become airborne.

A traitor who could see the future. This was not comforting.

The chase took him beyond his usual route. Good. Perhaps that would mean reinforcements and another set of eyes to witness the boy who had just—

Disappeared. Off the edge of a roof.

Tianqi’s musings had made him slow. His knowledge of the city had made him presume the light-footed boy would not leap off the tallest building in the Lower Ring directly into a neighborhood that had been notorious for resistance to Fire Nation rule before it had been razed to the ground.

More fool he.

There was a crash in the alley to Tianqi’s right. He slid down the stone edifice of the building. The boy must have broken his own fall. He had rounded the corner. Then, where?

The Lower Ring was dark as pitch tonight. The alley was darker. Nothing moved. A pile of broken shipping crates. A barrel. An empty storefront. A singed tarp hanging still in the windless air. Tianqi waited. He listened.

A sound: the shifting of a living body. A shape in the broken window, a shade of black darker than the air around it.

Tianqi approached. The shape froze. Given a moment, the boy would make another break for it. He did not have one to spare. He threw his hand of stone.

The pygmy puma yowled. It hissed and spat and clawed at the stone hand curled into the nape of its neck.

More pairs of yellow eyes peered at Tianqi out of the darkness. An entire clan of them.

His commander had said being stationed in the Lower Ring would be a rewarding challenge. It would look excellent on his resume. He would be the first line of defense against invasion and the last against insurrection. It would be a noble choice to volunteer for such an assignment.

He was _really_ starting to regret listening to his commander.

Zuko didn’t so much as breathe until the earthbender was gone. Then he didn’t breathe for a full minute after that.

Through the slats in the old barrel, he could see the pygmy pumas circling territorially around the alley. He hoped they wouldn’t come for him next; he knew from experience animals didn’t like it when someone threw rocks at them, and that they didn’t always differentiate between rock-throwers and innocent bystanders.

He made no sudden movements as he climbed out of the barrel. The pygmy pumas were inclined to ignore him, apparently. _Small miracles._

Very small, in a world of almost nothing but disasters.

Zuko took the least efficient route possible back to the wall, crawling through abandoned buildings rather than over them. The streets were lousy with soldiers, obviously, and the rooftops—

He wanted to laugh. Or scream. One or the other would be fine, but he couldn’t do either right now because he was dressed head-to-toe in black and sneaking through the city where he lived as if it were Pohuai Stronghold, all because of his sister.

_Really, Azula? The Dai Li?_

She had done what Uncle could never do and taken Ba Sing Se. She had done what _Zuko_ could never do and defeated the Avatar.

_I wasn’t trying to _kill_ him. I wasn’t—_ He clenched his teeth as if the thought would bounce off him like a punch.

And apparently, Azula had not been content simply to steal the quests that her family members had fought and bled and known unspeakable loss trying to achieve out from under them in a single day. She had found her own special accomplishment to carry home to Father: bringing the secret, elite earthbending police of the greatest Earth Kingdom stronghold under her thumb and keeping their loyalty, even while an ocean away.

…if she _was_ an ocean away.

_No. Absolutely not. Don't even consider it._

_But it would be just my luck._

He simmered with a rage so hot he worried there might be smoke coming out of his nostrils the whole way home.

Zuko hooked a hand over the top of the sill and swung in through the open window. From the other side of the apartment, he heard Uncle’s door quietly slide shut.

That, he could deal with in the morning. He smelled like smoke and dirt; he had burnt all his anger out in the long trek here; he was too tired for any of it.

* * *

He had the dream again.

And again.

And again.

* * *

_The Ba Sing Se Sun: _

_Ba Sing Se’s First Official Newspaper as Appointed and Approved by Fire Lord Ozai_

**Royal Return**

> Princess Azula returned to Capital City to an appropriately celebratory reception today. After her noble victory in Ba Sing Se, securing the Fire Nation’s permanent influence in the Earth Kingdom, the Princess greeted a procession in front of the Royal Palace. Over eight hundred members of the nobility and citizens of the homeland were in attendance. Her advisors announced the return of our “clever and beautiful” Princess to the gathered crowd.
> 
> Princess Azula has accomplished two of the most significant military successes of this decade within the last month: the breakthrough at Ba Sing Se and the removal of the Avatar. With such an acceleration of victories for the Fire Nation, experts at Caldera University have predicted an end to the war “within the year.”
> 
> Fire Lord Ozai’s official release (see page 4) praises his daughter as highly in writing as he does in speech. After three years of waiting, rumors abound as to when the Fire Lord will finally crown the Princess his primary heir.
> 
> After much speculation, the Fire Lord has announced the newly-appointed Governor of Ba Sing Se. In a conference on the steps of his office, Governor Noru…

The rest of the article quickly became illegible as the paper started to blacken and curl between Zuko’s fingers. With a snarl, he threw it in the gutter.

Little tongues of flame had time to eat away his father’s name before the trickle of rainwater in the gutter doused them. Long after Zuko walked away, the half-burned newspaper fluttered into the canal. The water carried it out of sight.

* * *

Lightning struck Zuko straight through the heart.

For once, he didn’t awaken gasping for air or flailing against his blanket. He woke up stock-still and calm—calmer than he’d been in weeks. Dawn was a long way off; his room was bathed in moonlight. That was good. It meant he had time to prepare.

With the efficiency of a navy man, Zuko dressed and began to pack. Sturdy shoes; utility knife; dark clothing, breathable enough to fight in; turtleseal-skin bag; passport; throwing knife; emergency coin; hood, to keep his ears warm; blanket; sunhat; two more knives, just in case. Last came his broadswords. They were hidden between the wall and the sturdy set of drawers that had come with the new apartment, which was unfortunately lacking in loose floorboards.

Uncle caught him silhouetted against the window, already reaching for the door.

“What are you doing awake?” Uncle yawned. “We don’t open the shop for hours.”

“I’m not opening the tea shop today, Uncle.”

Uncle was silent. Zuko glanced at his face—he looked thoughtful, and old, and wise. He did not look surprised. If Zuko let himself believe it, he could have almost said Uncle looked proud.

“Where are you going, Zuko?”

“You told me I was free to choose my own destiny. That’s where I’m going.” Zuko’s hand closed around the door handle. He stopped. He turned around. Uncle faced him with his hands in front, ready to return a bow.

Zuko threw his arms around him. There was no hesitation before Uncle hugged him back. The old man was strong and soft. He was more of a home than any person or place Zuko had known since he watched his mother’s face vanish into a dark hood and a darker night.

“Be safe,” Uncle said, low and serious. Zuko understood all that lived beneath the words—the trust that Zuko could protect himself as well as Uncle had protected him for years.

“I’ll see you again.” Zuko could not give the promise his uncle asked for, but he could promise that much.

The streets belonged to the soldiers and the rooftops belonged to the Dai Li. To get out of Ba Sing Se, he used neither.

Zuko had not survived every close escape so far in his life by following paths meant to be walked. An entrance was an entrance; an exit, an exit. Many things counted as either or both if you looked past the blinders of intention and precedent—if you looked at them from the bottom up.

The narrow canals that striated the Upper Ring were functional as well as decorative; running water irrigated parks and gardens, kept wells in the better-off neighborhoods from turning stagnant, provided an easy method of waste disposal, and, soon, would carry the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation swiftly out of the city to wherever the canals ended.

They had to end somewhere.

All Zuko had to do was cling to overhang shadows for half a block, then cross the street. The only differences between this and his daily walk to work at the Jasmine Dragon were time of night and the way he was dressed. And the swords, of course.

A deep breath, a short drop off the footbridge—barely making a splash in the moving water—and the current pulled him down a winding path beneath a city rising to greet the pink-tinged morning.

It was better than the petrifying cold of the arctic sea, at least. Compared to that and the three-week stint floating through endless saltwater that came after, the chill of springtime runoff and the pace of the current were nearly relaxing. Zuko allowed nothing but his head above the surface, stayed as close to the stone wall as possible, and watched the lightening sky fly past overhead, broken occasionally by the passing shadows of bridges.

A woman dumped a bin of dishwater over Zuko’s head as he passed behind a restaurant. The water grew shallow for several city blocks, enough that keeping his body underwater meant his chest scraped against the bottom. He dove beneath at the telltale click of soldier’s boots and did not come up for air until his lungs burned.

The water got deeper and the current faster. Other canals converged, emptying into one; the street was now so far away none of the city-sounds were audible above the sound of water over stone. Zuko was entirely in shadow, the blue sky a distant ribbon overhead.

He heard rushing, crashing water.

The canal ended ahead at a wide, gaping maw into darkness. Zuko realized, abruptly, that there were no open canals in the Middle Ring—but there were sewer tunnels beneath it.

The drop had to be a dozen feet, at least. The smell hit Zuko harder than the water. He would have to clean his swords and knives thoroughly as soon as he found his way back to the surface. He only hoped the bag was as waterproof as the vendor had promised it to be; the loss of his fake passport and all his clothes wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to Zuko recently, but it could prove inconvenient.

He tumbled through water so sludge-like it made him grateful for the darkness. Things brushed against him—accumulated trash from the largest city in the Earth Kingdom, he hoped, and nothing more. Nothing alive. Zuko kept his head above water; he kept himself in the current.

Time passed, or it didn’t. He had lost all sense of it. But eventually: light.

The light was small and distant, but it was there, and the rushing water carried him straight toward it. He swam, quietly rejoicing, anticipating the sun on his face—

A current caught Zuko around the chest and spun his body like a child’s toy. Another tunnel must have emptied into this one, creating a cross-current that swept his head underwater. He kicked toward the surface, toward the light.

Hard metal slammed into Zuko’s spine. He broke the surface with a sputtering cough and saw that he had reached the end of the tunnel, which was blocked off by thick, vertical bars. Beyond it was sunlight, so bright after the darkness it dazzled him. The current pinned him to the bars, barely half the width of his body apart. Zuko took as deep a breath as he could, pulled one fist out of the water, and summoned a concentrated flame.

Fire daggers were a signature move of Zuko’s—or, he always hoped they would be. No one besides Uncle had ever commented on them, but he’d spent months perfecting the fine control required to keep a flame still and candescent at the same time, so close to the skin but never burning himself.

There was nobody to impress in this tunnel that was currently doing its level best to drown Zuko in sewage. He held the glowing edge to the metal and pushed.

It took a long time, probably. If Zuko was sweating, it was indistinguishable from the grime sticking to his hair and face. If the sun moved in the sky, he couldn’t see anything but the way it glanced off the water just beyond the bars. If he slipped and burned a thick, red mark across his right wrist, he would deal with the inevitable infection once he was _out of this sewer._

First one slice through the metal, then another. The second was two feet higher, almost out of Zuko’s reach with the exhaustion of the task coupled with keeping himself above water. He bobbed, gasped, and nearly swallowed mouthfuls of whatever the rushing current threw into his face, but after some unknowable measure of time, the section of bar fell away and sank with a splash.

Zuko’s arms shook. He hauled himself up the metal pole, through the fresh gap—still glowing forge-hot, inches from his skin—and out the other side.

The water fell away into the distance before Zuko, a man-made river that cut through the rolling lands beyond what remained of Ba Sing Se’s great Wall. The current was still swift, but with the room to spread wider than the tunnel the river was nearly peaceful.

Zuko floated on his back, feeling the sun on his face.

There was work to do. But first, he could let himself rest. _A man needs his rest._

* * *

Thinking ahead had never been Zuko’s greatest strength. Still, he needed enough of a plan to pick a direction to walk in.

He sat in the dark, having deemed a campfire this close to the city too high a risk, and catalogued everything he knew about the Avatar’s friends.

They were definitely out there, and probably still together. The two from the Water Tribe were brother and sister—as if that meant much on its own, Zuko thought grimly. But he had seen the way they worked in tandem, the things they were willing to do for one another. The two were together still, he decided. The waterbender—

Katara. Katara and Sokka. Zuko decided he should start thinking of them as people with names if he was planning to join them in an act of deliberate treason. It was only polite.

Katara had been protective of the Avatar, and violently so. She wouldn’t have given up yet, if only out of pure rage at the death of her friend.

Sokka was a warrior. Zuko knew a bit about what that meant for a man of the Southern Water Tribe. It was a duty—one that kept a teenage boy standing tall with a warship bearing down on him, for a start. He would have gone down with the Avatar before abandoning people who needed him, and certainly before abandoning the war altogether.

The earthbender was an unknown variable. Zuko didn’t even know her name. Uncle had been there, maybe he’d caught it—but it was too late to ask him now, and who knew what good her name would be to Zuko.

The Southern Water Tribe, then. That was his best lead. Zuko turned his thoughts that way and recalled all he could: an alliance with their fleet was the closest thing to a formidable naval force the Earth Kingdom had; they were notorious for blocking Fire Nation access through Chameleon Bay—the reason Uncle had once led a march by land an extra hundred miles to avoid them; Chameleon Bay was a straight shot by water from Ba Sing Se.

There was little chance the Avatar’s friends would be with the Water Tribe’s fleet, but they were just as likely to be there as anywhere else. It was a start. Zuko had spent three years chasing dead ends from one end of the world to the other. What was one more hopeless quest?

At least this one would mean something. At least it was his own choice.

Cold, alone, under the wide star-map of the sky, Zuko slept better than he had in weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll be honest the concept for this fic literally started as  
zuko: *wakes up in a cold sweat* oh fuck i have to join the avatar! *runs into traffic*
> 
> EDIT: since people seemed to enjoy the meme i added in the end notes on chapter 3 so much, here's one i made while i was working on chapter 1  



	2. From Many Different Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has commented! And special shout-out to MuffinLance for the rec on tumblr. I'm currently planning somewhere around 7 chapters for this fic, but it might grow extra heads and try to eat me, so no guarantees on that front.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: depictions of claustrophobia and panic attacks, animal injury, more canon-typical Bad Stuff

The directions Sokka had given him were like Hakoda’s son himself: thorough, inspired, and nearly incomprehensible at first glance.

The clan of waterbenders apparently living in the Earth Kingdom were one of the vaguest points on Sokka’s list of allies. Nevertheless, Hakoda and Bato had agreed on a strategic choice to find them first. They were already deep in occupied territory, and although they would have to backtrack quite a bit now, it would save them time in the long run. Hakoda was _not_ charting the entire coast of the Earth Kingdom twice over to get to the Northern Air Temple and back.

And besides, waterbenders were beyond a rare blessing to the Southern fleet and a boon to any naval endeavor. Sailing with Katara, even while she had been… having a tough time being around him, had proven just how much a bender truly in her element could make or break a victory. If these distant kinfolk of the Water Tribe were half the benders his daughter was, Hakoda would be honored to fight by their side.

Pride in Katara—pride in _both_ of his children—swept over Hakoda like a foaming wave. He was proud to be their father… and he was sad. Pride and grief were woven together like a single strand of twine. Sokka and Katara had grown up so quickly. They had met so many challenges with strength and bravery and heart. They were more than a match for this difficult world.

It was—or ought to have been, he thought—every father’s wish that his children wouldn’t _have_ to bear the weights of adulthood so early, regardless of whether they _could_.

Hakoda rubbed his eyes. The whale-oil lamp was running low. It was late, and they were leaving this brief stop at port come dawn. It would be a long journey in a short amount of time to finally end this war.

He could practically hear Bato’s voice telling him to _go to sleep already, ice-for-brains._ Hakoda chuckled, stretched, and considered listening to his inner Bato before the _outer_ Bato came pounding down his door to say it aloud.

The lamp was in his hand, ready to extinguish, when the assassin showed up.

A quiet _squeak_ behind him was all the warning Hakoda had. He turned to see a figure dressed in black, his hood pulled low and the lower half of his face covered, land lightly below the open porthole. The hinge squeaked again as a cool breeze came in.

Hakoda eyed the hilt of a weapon sheathed behind the figure’s shoulder. He readied a fighting stance as more of a warning than anything; the intruder hadn’t yet moved to attack.

_Maybe, _he thought, _he was expecting something a little… redder._

The sight of these quarters must have been a shock, then. While there had been no time to transport everything from the fleet onto the captured Fire Nation vessel, Hakoda had slowly, one-by-one, brought in items he found useful: the oil lamp, his old desk, his own familiar weapons.

The ceremonial headdress was to bring good luck from the Ocean Spirit. The decorative pelts had been Bato’s idea. He didn’t have an excuse for the huge blue flag covering an entire wall, though.

“If you’re looking for your next meal,” Hakoda said calmly, “you came to the wrong place. We have nothing here worth stealing.”

“I’m not here to steal from you.”

If the man in front of him expected that to be a reassurance, he was dead wrong. Not a thief meant something else—meant he knew where he was, who he was talking to, and had another purpose in mind beyond living to see the sunrise.

And if he wanted to avoid a fight, the words that came out of his mouth _next_ were the worst possible thing he could have said:

“I need to know where the Avatar’s friends have gone.”

Hakoda immediately did his level best to kill him.

The assassin dodged a blow to the throat with a sound of surprise. He was quick. Hakoda should have seen that coming—nobody held that still before a fight unless they knew they could move when they needed to.

“Wait!” the man cried, half a second before ducking the swing of Hakoda’s whalebone club. He’d known keeping it by his bedside was a good idea. “I’m not going to hurt you!”

“You’re right about that.” Hakoda swung for the assassin’s ankle. He jumped, but a quick strike from Hakoda’s knee took out his balance. He hit the floor. “What do you want with the children?”

The assassin pushed up as if about to stand. His legs spun, along with his whole body, in a move that kicked the club out of Hakoda’s hand and ended with the man on his feet again. Well, Hakoda had fought bare-handed plenty—if this monster thought he would give up his own children instead of snapping his neck, he had another thing coming.

It was more of a challenge than he expected, though, he’d give the guy that much. The man in black blocked a handful of blows before Hakoda got an arm around his throat. He let out a grunt of pain as Hakoda wrenched an arm behind his back.

“I w— I’m trying t—” he choked before Hakoda’s bicep came down hard on his windpipe. Something in the crack of his voice and the stature Hakoda could feel as he gripped him, boney and not quite _done_ yet, told him that this… this was a kid.

He was under no illusions about how dangerous a teenager could be—his earlier proud musings on his own daughter came to mind—but he let up just enough that the boy could take a labored breath.

He gasped out a sentence that sent Hakoda’s head spinning.

“I want to _help them.”_

If it was a trick, it was a clever one. The fraction of a second when his grip weakened was all the opening the boy needed to slip from his arms like an eel-hound puppy. Hakoda grabbed his club; the boy drew his sword—_swords._ Plural. Because of course.

The heavy sound of steel-on-bone reverberated angrily in the metal cabin as their weapons met.

“Help them?” Hakoda asked suspiciously.

“Defeat the Fire Lord,” the boy growled. He tried to pin Hakoda’s arm between his swords. Hakoda punched him in the gut. “The Avatar is dead,” he gasped, voice strained. “Who else is going to do it?”

Hakoda’s heart was weighed down by the memory of Aang, unconscious and wan, looking much smaller than his twelve years. The horror in his eyes when he found out the world believed him gone. The storm his children had braved to find their lost friend.

He dodged a swipe from one of the dao—slower than the one that had preceded it. The boy was favoring his left hand.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Don’t _call_ me that!” The whistle of a sword nearly shaved half Hakoda’s beard off.

“Fair enough,” he conceded, “I already have one.”

He swung for the head.

It became increasingly obvious, as Hakoda knocked the boy in black around his quarters, that the kid was on the defensive by choice. He’d had a half-dozen opportunities for strikes that could have slowed Hakoda down, but hadn’t so much as drawn blood. This boy… actually wasn’t trying to hurt him. Go figure.

And he could have, even with whatever gave him that slight hesitation in his right hand, no doubt about that. The boy knew his way around those swords. He knew what his own body was capable of. Hakoda knew danger when he saw it.

He backed off the slightest bit, slowing the tempo of the fight as if he were getting tired. He _was_ tired, but he could have fought all night if it meant keeping his children safe.

His children weren’t safe, though. That was the problem. And this new problem, if he could spin it, might become a solution. There was a slight suspicion that had begun needling at Hakoda the moment the boy drew his swords. It swelled like a sail in hearty wind the more they fought—the more the boy demonstrated how light on his feet he was, how he barely made a sound beyond the grunt he let out when Hakoda knocked him in the solar plexus.

He pushed the kid into the wall, struck his left hand to loosen the grip around one sword until it clattered to the floor, and pinned his right hand down. Hakoda’s club was braced tight against his throat.

With his own face so close to the boy’s, he heard the harsh edge of his breathing. He felt the tremor of his body as he held himself still.

“Why should I tell you where they are?” Hakoda asked. “Give me one good reason.”

The boy’s eyes were shrouded in the shadow of his hood. He waited; never let it be said that Chief Hakoda was not patient with children.

“I have information,” the boy finally answered. “About the Fire Nation. And I can protect them.”

Suspicion turned into theory. The theory required a bit more evidence, but it wasn’t a bad one—though it would be a mighty coincidence if Hakoda had who he _thought_ he had at his mercy, eager to lend his help. It was a monumental exercise in hope to believe it.

These were strange times indeed; hope had proven surprisingly reliable lately.

“Protect them, huh?” Hakoda let the silence stretch. Wind whistled through the open porthole. “Prove it.”

He dropped his club away from the boy’s neck, stepped back, and waited for him to show what he could do.

Hesitantly, the boy crouched low enough to pick up his fallen sword. His shadowy eyes never left Hakoda. He took a careful step forward, then another. Hakoda quirked an eyebrow. It was probably the wind again, but for a second, he could have sworn he heard a near-silent huff of laughter.

One sword; Hakoda blocked it easily. Another came down; another deflection. A test; an answer. The boy spun his swords once more and dove into the fight.

He moved faster, now, and less carefully, though _less carefully_ wasn’t saying much. Precision—if not perfection—was the load-bearing center of how the boy moved. Hakoda wondered who’d trained him.

“Good thinking,” Hakoda praised lightly as the boy ducked under his arm and came up behind. “Smaller than your opponent, so use that against them.”

The boy said nothing. Hakoda tried to turn. The kid turned with him, followed his footsteps with a blade at his back so he was only ever in the periphery.

“Neat trick,” he said, and swung his club over the top of his own head.

He felt a moment of relief when the club didn’t make contact. Hakoda continued his running commentary on the boy’s choices as they fought.

“So, what’s the plan? You don’t win if you’re only reacting.”

Hakoda caught an opening when the boy’s swords were raised and body checked him halfway across the room. The kid turned his own fall into a backwards roll, back on his feet in an instant.

“Staying rooted.” Hakoda nodded. “Not bad.”

The only sound from the boy was quiet, even breathing. Hakoda switched tactics.

“I’ve seen earthbenders who fight like that.”

Was that a twitch? A faster swipe than the others?

“Not many who were very good at it, though,” he added.

Now _that,_ that was the posture of a teenager who dearly wanted to roll his eyes. Hakoda would bet his favorite spear on it. Well, maybe Bato’s favorite spear.

“You’re—ah, careful of the lantern—going to trip yourself if you don’t slow down.”

A huff.

“Is bouncing off walls all you do in your spare time? A man needs hobbies.”

Any reaction was lost in the flying spin-kick the kid used to launch himself four feet in the air off the far wall.

Hakoda blocked it and barked, in the voice he’d used the first time Sokka went out on the ice alone too late in the season, “Hey!”

The boy faltered.

“Watch that pelt,” he finished.

_“Seriously?”_

Hakoda smiled. “It’s an antique.”

The boy was close enough that his quiet growl was audible. His next two blows glanced off Hakoda’s club, but one came close to nicking him in the arm.

“You’re excellent with those swords. How long have you studied?”

“Since I was a kid,” he grunted between his teeth.

“Quick on your feet, too,” Hakoda observed. “And quiet. Thief?”

“Sometimes.”

He kicked at Hakoda’s chest. Hakoda caught the boy’s ankle in a firm grip and broke his balance before the blow made contact. As always, he spun away and was rooted again in the space of a breath.

“You’re young,” Hakoda said.

“You’re not.”

_That,_ he hadn’t expected. The end of Hakoda’s club landed against the floor with a _thump_. He threw his head back and laughed.

In an instant, two swords were crossed at his throat. Hakoda didn’t flinch.

The swords were as still as stone, though he could still hear the boy’s breathing. The Chief of the Southern Water Tribe stood straight and proud with blades nearly kissing his skin, as if he couldn’t see moonlight glinting off sharpened steel, as if he were more than merely a man who would bleed out here and now were this young man to press two inches forward and pull the dao in and down. He wouldn’t do it, after all. That was what mattered.

Questions and answers, those mattered too. A theory, falsifiable.

“You said you know a lot about the Fire Nation,” Hakoda said. “Enough to infiltrate one of their strongholds?”

The swords pulled back by a hair’s breadth. He felt the flinch.

“What?”

Didn’t the poor boy know his voice as good as answered any questions he could have asked? From what he’d heard, _Aang_ was a better liar than this.

“When I found out that my children were traveling with the Avatar,” Hakoda explained, “I kept an ear out for any drop of news I could find. I lead a naval fleet. We stop in ports. People talk.”

He hoped his smile was as kind as he meant it to be. The kid wasn’t shaking yet, but his swords moved enough to indicate a living human held them. Compared to his impeccable control earlier on, that was practically a breakdown.

Hakoda continued, because the boy clearly didn’t intend to speak until he knew what Hakoda knew.

“People _especially_ like to talk when a man is worth a sizeable bounty and no one knows a single other thing about him,” Hakoda said. The final gambit, the final pin in his theory. “Not even his face.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice creaked like he hadn’t so much as seen a drop of water in weeks.

Perhaps _subtlety_ wasn’t the young man’s strongsuit.

“The Blue Spirit has a nice ring to it,” Hakoda commented casually. “Could make a good name for a Water Tribe ship.”

As instantaneously as they appeared, the swords vanished. The boy looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands now that his weapon was sheathed and the fight was over.

“I could be a bounty hunter myself,” he mumbled, sounding angry that Hakoda had worked out his secret identity. “The Avatar had quite the price on his head then, too.”

“Perhaps.” Hakoda nodded. “But so do I, and you put away your swords.”

“Maybe your children are worth more.”

“You’re not doing a very good job of selling yourself here, son.”

“I _told you _not to call me that,” he snapped.

“You haven’t given me anything else to call you. Would you prefer Blue?”

The boy said nothing.

“Mister Spirit?” Hakoda joked. It didn’t get a laugh. “Tough crowd. _Are _you a bounty hunter?”

“No.”

“Alright.” Hakoda pulled the heavy driftwood desk that had been knocked over in the fight back upright and gestured to a fur cushion. “Have a seat.”

The boy sat like he worried the cushion would come to life and fight him too. His posture was severely perfect. It broke open a startling contrast to the way he’d used his swords: reacting, taking advantage of the first opening he saw, no attention paid to form. Hakoda was more and more curious about this kid with every passing minute.

Good thing he hadn’t killed him.

“Did something happen to your hand?” Hakoda asked. The boy tensed, then nodded. “Show me.”

He extended one black-gloved hand, using the other to gingerly roll back his sleeve. The skin beneath was a furious red, blistered with healing interrupted by the friction of tight fabric. Hakoda crossed the room, opened the chest in the corner, and came back to the boy with a jar and a roll of bandages.

“I can take care of it,” the boy groused.

“Clearly you haven’t been. How long ago did this happen?” He opened the jar and began dabbing the cream the healers made onto the boy’s injury. It wasn’t exactly fragrant, but it got the job done.

“A few days.”

“Firebender?”

There was silence as Hakoda wrapped his wrist.

“Yeah,” the boy finally admitted.

“There’s no shame in it,” Hakoda said firmly. “Why do you think I keep this stuff in my quarters? It’s not for the smell, I’ll tell you that much. We’ve all gotten hurt trying to end this war.”

“I guess we have.”

Hakoda smiled.

“Did you at least give him something to remember you by?” It was a bit of encouragement he liked to use with younger warriors, and Hakoda highly doubted any firebender could send this boy running for the hills without earning a few new scars to show for it.

He was surprised to hear the boy laugh—quiet, small, and almost sarcastic, but definitely there.

“He won’t forget anytime soon. Trust me.”

“Good.”

Hakoda sat at his desk. He studied the young man across from him for several seconds—an eternity during a fight, but a scant few breaths in the quiet. He considered the rigid posture and impatient swordsmanship, the near-mythic heroics and the clumsy entrance. He was just wondering how to bring up the answer to the boy’s original demand for information when, against all odds and precedent, the boy himself spoke first.

“I didn’t know you were their father.” He placed a fist in the opposite palm and bowed. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s not one man aboard this ship who wouldn’t give his life to protect those kids.” Hakoda crossed his arms. “But yes. They’re mine.”

“I understand why you don’t trust me to protect them—”

“I didn’t say that.”

The boy’s gaze snapped to Hakoda. His eyes gleamed in the shadow of his hood like two distant flames.

“My son and daughter,” Hakoda began slowly, “have been through a lot. They’ve known great loss and great responsibility since before they even left the South Pole. Traveling with the Avatar has put them more in harm’s way than any father would ever wish for his children.” He didn’t miss the tightening in the boy’s shoulders at that. “I haven’t been able to protect them. I have a duty to the world, and my children know that duty too. They carry a bigger share of it than I ever will. I am so incredibly proud of them, so amazed at what they’ve done and what I know they’ll do. But, if I’m honest, I don’t mind the idea of someone keeping an extra eye on them while they do it.”

_I’m asking a wanted man to babysit my children before they go to war,_ Hakoda realized. He might laugh about it later—had to laugh, or he’d weep.

“It can’t be that easy,” the boy said, as if to himself.

“It isn’t. I can’t tell you exactly where they are,” Hakoda explained gravely. “I don’t know. But I do know where they’re headed, and you might not like it. Can I make a deal with you?”

“Yes,” the boy agreed.

So diving headfirst into unknown consequences was a central part of his personality, then. Good to know.

“I’ll tell you where they’re going, and then you tell me how you knew this was a captured ship.”

The boy hesitated, but after a moment he nodded.

“There’s… a plan,” Hakoda said. He wasn’t a fool; he wouldn’t tell this boy about the invasion, nor the rendezvous point, and certainly not about Aang. The extent to which Hakoda trusted him relied entirely upon how willing and able he would be to follow the children halfway across the world with a price on his head—and how easily he could gain _their_ trust. “We had intended to stay together, but they went on ahead. Into the Fire Nation.”

“The—?” the boy let out a strange, choked off sound. His shoulders shook. He lowered his head into his hands, scrubbing fingers under the hood. Shaggy dark hair fell over them.

“I know,” Hakoda said. He reached out a hand to clasp the boy reassuringly on the shoulder. “It would be a difficult journey for anyone who _isn’t _on a wanted poster. No one will think less of you if you choose not to follow them.”

“I don’t—” The boy’s voice broke, terribly and _awfully_ young, “—have a choice. Not anymore.”

“That’s the biggest lie a man can tell himself,” Hakoda said sternly. He squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “There will be consequences to whatever choice you make, but you are never who you were yesterday, even if you try your hardest to run from it. Everything is choices. All you can do is make sure you’re making them for yourself.”

The boy laughed wetly behind the hands clenched in his hair.

“You sound like my uncle,” he murmured. “He always believed in second chances.”

“Your uncle sounds like a good man.”

“I miss him,” the boy whispered.

“He’d be proud of you, I’m sure.” Hakoda grinned when the kid looked up at him.

He felt his own grin waver. Closer to the lamp, with the boy’s hood falling back just a bit, the strip of exposed skin around his eyes revealed the deep red mark of an old burn. No way to tell how far it went, how old it was, or whether he’d had someone to take care of him after.

The boy caught the flinch. He must have been used to it—that old theater mask on his wanted posters wasn’t just for dramatic flair, then. He shrugged Hakoda’s hand off his shoulder and stood abruptly.

“I should go.”

“Now hold on.” Hakoda stood too. “I seem to recall you agreed to a deal.”

“Right. Yes. The ship.” The boy shifted awkwardly and crossed his arms.

“How did you know we weren’t Fire Nation?”

“Like you said,” the boy growled, “ports. People talk.”

Hakoda raised an eyebrow. “We took some heavy damage recently. We stopped for repairs over a week ago and they didn’t suspect a thing. What else?”

He sighed.

“The flags. You’re running one with vertical orange stripes, starboard-side. That signals your ship is altering course. A real Fire Nation vessel wouldn’t leave it up while docked.”

Hakoda’s second eyebrow followed the first. The current Fire Nation naval code was less than a decade old and under lock and key—breaking the Avatar out of prison was one thing, but espionage was another. Hakoda wondered, not for the first and certainly not for the last time, just who exactly he’d sent tagging along behind his children.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, resolving to march straight to the deck the moment the boy left and take those flags down. He wouldn’t mind picking the kid’s brain for more Fire Nation secrets, but something told Hakoda it might be trouble convincing him to stick around that long when he was this jumpy over someone seeing an eighth of his face.

The boy nodded. He bowed again, military-perfect.

“Thank you for your help.” He paused. “And for not killing me.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hakoda joked. “Good luck, Mister Spirit.”

The young man in black leapt into a crouch on the edge of the open porthole as easily as a lizard-parrot. He turned his head, caught in profile against the summer night sky.

“Just Blue, is fine.”

Hakoda’s laughter rang out on the wind, still there long after the figure in black was gone.

* * *

“That’ll be eight silver pieces.”

_“Eight?_ Your sign says five copper apiece for these, and I only have—”

“That’s in Fire Nation money, kid. Gotta do the conversions, see? The value of Earth Kingdom coin’s way down.”

“Let’s see if you still feel that way when I take this Earth Kingdom coin and _shove it—”_

“Prefer not to eat today? Or maybe you want to spend the night in jail. You could get a hot meal there for real cheap, I hear.”

“And _I_ heard you can—” Zuko smelled the smoke wafting from his clenched fist. He sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. “Fine.”

He put back three pouches of rice. The small pot and the spyglass, he kept; he could forage or beg for food, but metalware didn’t grow on bushes.

Six months ago, Zuko reflected as he wandered the busy port town, he’d taken the strength of Fire Nation coin for granted: relied on it for provisions and appreciated the convenience when he bothered to think about it at all. Of course Fire Nation money carried more weight—the Fire Nation was the center of the world. Zuko had been oriented around its pull like a compass.

The needle had started spinning at some point in Ba Sing Se. Maybe it had been when Zuko freed the Avatar’s bison, or maybe long before that, and the choice had only opened his eyes to the wild careening of his world. It explained why he had been so dizzy afterwards.

Life in banishment was striped in black and white: things that didn’t matter, and the Avatar. One or the other. The war had been firmly under the category of _not my problem._ Any investment in victory or strategy or the wellbeing of the troops had burned away along with Zuko’s honor.

The Fire Lord had personally seen to that.

But the war _did_ matter. Zuko understood that now. Only it mattered backwards and upside-down; what he’d been taught to see as victory would be failure, and what he’d believed to be marks of success were bleeding wounds in the world. It was inescapably _his problem_.

He’d finally stopped trying to escape it. His country, his family, his bearing of witness—_his._ Zuko didn’t have much to his name anymore; he barely had a name at all, depending on the day. He could make room to carry a little bit of the world with him.

He wouldn’t have objected to also carrying some food, though. He had plenty of room for that.

“Authentic, confirmed by experts from Ba Sing Se University,” called a bird-like voice in Zuko’s ear, “real Avatar relics!”

He stopped in the middle of the street. The flow of human movement parted around him like a rock in a stream.

“Relics?” He turned to the merchant, who smiled at him with wide, rubbery lips like a python-koi.

“Yes! This… _worldly_ young man knows quality when he sees it. You there!” The merchant beckoned to a woman in the crowd who, unlike Zuko, looked like she had more than three silver pieces on her. “How’d you like to own real items recovered from the ancient city deep beneath Ba Sing Se that once belonged to the Avatar?”

Zuko crossed his arms and leaned down to peer suspiciously at the merchant’s wares. The woman came closer, intrigued.

“What’s that?” The woman pointed to a string of wooden beads.

“Ah, excellent eye!” The merchant picked up the item and dangled it enticingly in front of his audience. “Airbender meditation beads, used by the monks over one hundred years ago!”

The pendant at the end of the chain was a flat circle with the whorls of the Air Nomads’ symbol carved into it. It actually looked a lot like the beads airbenders would wear, but—

“That was carved recently,” Zuko said, tilting his face toward the woman already reaching for the ‘relic,’ though he didn’t break eye contact with the merchant. “You can tell from the grooves. The wood is lighter.”

“Oh.” The woman furrowed her brow.

“Well! Who’s to say the Avatar didn’t carve his own beads?” The merchant’s teeth clicked together too loudly. He glared at Zuko. “But if you’re interested in something a bit _older…”_ He held up a scrap of tightly-woven yellow fabric. “A piece of the air glider belonging to the Avatar himself! Used in the very fight where he met his end! Note the singed edges from lightning bent by Princess Azula—”

“The Avatar’s glider was orange,” Zuko scoffed.

The woman and the merchant both blinked at him.

“What?” Zuko grumbled. “Anyone could tell you that.”

“How about this!” The merchant diverted attention back to himself with a cry and held out what was blatantly part of an ostrich-horse tail tied with a ribbon. “Hair from the head of the slain Avatar!”

“Are you _kidding me?”_ Zuko exploded. From the corner of his eye, he saw the woman start edging politely back into the crowd. “He was bald! Who are you trying to fool?”

“A skeptic, hm? Tell me, how do _you_ supposedly know so much about the Avatar?” The merchant raised a thin eyebrow.

“I— Uh,” Zuko stammered. “I met him.”

“Did you?” The merchant leaned in close. He smelled like wood shavings and acrid dye.

“It… it was a while ago. He… saved me. From. Some pirates?” Zuko quietly wondered if there were any earthbenders around who could conveniently make the ground swallow him in the next ten seconds.

“Pirates.” The merchant’s smile changed. It was no longer a mask-like rictus of designed approachability, but something sadistic, gleeful—

Familiar.

The man’s eyes traced over Zuko’s scar.

“What did you say your name was, again?” the pirate asked lightly.

“I didn’t,” Zuko grunted, and flipped the table.

* * *

Later, eyewitness testimony would prove both highly sought-after and wildly contradictory.

The few facts that almost everyone could agree upon were these: there was a boy. There was a man. The latter chased the former through a market. It ended with one arrest. A ship, at some point, caught fire. The birds were very loud.

All other details varied.

Zheng, an aspiring dollmaker working his way to Ba Sing Se one tiny porcelain hand at a time, said the man had a sword. His brother Zong swore the man had two. Their sister Ta Lin insisted the boy was the one with the swords. Considering each sibling had a separate stall along the thoroughfare in this order, their stories were not mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, it drove a wedge between the three that would not truly dissipate until Zong’s wedding six years later. This last fact is irrelevant to the story, but it is highly relevant to the complex web of lives that became tied to a complete stranger’s with only a single, passing moment and continued to do so with new and different strangers every single day, forever. Such is life.

Konai, age eight, said the boy did a backflip that was “the coolest thing ever!” Officials made certain to archive this testimony.

The source of the altercation between the man and the boy was also up for debate. Several of the witnesses believed the boy to be a thief. Most fervent in this belief was an Earth Kingdom merchant whose cabbage cart the boy knocked into the bay during the pursuit. Others considered the man a dangerous criminal attempting violence against a defenseless young person. Ta Lin, mentioned above, heartily disagreed with the assessment of the boy as “defenseless.”

One theory of note, which an anonymous bystander insisted was the complete and utter truth based on words she overheard passing between the man and the boy as they got tangled in and subsequently cut to ribbons her array of hand-woven scarves, implicated the man as the murderer of the boy’s father, whom the boy had sought lo these many years with nothing to remember him by but a disfiguring scar across his face and a decade of burning hatred.

Another witness swore up and down the boy had only called the man’s wares fake.

Those whose sympathies lay with the boy related that he cried for help as the man dragged him up the gangplank of an ornate ship. More neutral bystanders testified that the boy instead cried a series of impressively creative phrases impugning the man’s face, breeding, personal hygiene, and pet lizard parrot.

Accounts fell apart after this point. It was unclear if the man succeeded in getting the boy onto his ship, or, if so, how the boy managed to get off of it again. It was similarly unclear what lit the ship on fire.

At this point, according to a Fire Nation naval officer of minor rank who was on shore leave at the time, the man was overheard shouting, with some distress, “My boat!” The aforementioned officer further went on to note that the boy pointed and laughed. She considered detaining the boy under suspicion of arson, until the flock of mountain quail-vultures burst from the burning ship.

By decree of the Earth King, mountain quail-vultures were classified as a category three contraband species due to their rarity and spiritual significance among a number of cultural groups in the eastern Earth Kingdom. Keeping more than three in captivity was punishable by severe fines. Intent to sell any number could result in imprisonment. These facts were taken into consideration during the man’s trial, weeks later, but at the time he was only arrested for stabbing a naval officer.

For the sake of clarity, official reports specified that this was a second naval officer of slightly higher rank than the one who witnessed the man’s confession of ownership over the boat. The man claimed that he had been aiming for the boy instead of the soldier. This did not help his case, largely due to the incontrovertible evidence of piracy discovered on the ship.

Though odd, the story of a burning pirate ship at a port-of-call under Fire Nation supervision would not have been one for immortalization in local legend, had it not been for the boy.

He vanished. That is, seven separate members of the gathered crowd declared that the boy had been standing in plain view before the birds appeared, but the moment the flock was gone, so was he. “Like a spirit,” Yi Shan of Gaipan repeated, at an unnecessary volume due to excitement and advanced age, to anyone who would listen. “A spirit of justice.”

Yi Shan’s wife, Lai Shan of Gaipan, insisted the boy had been startled by the birds and fallen off the boardwalk into the water.

Zuko was soaking wet.

Seawater had completely drenched his shoes, and his sunhat had floated away. He’d managed to keep the thing on his head while getting thrown through storefronts, but the minute he hit the water the traitor hat deserted him.

Zuko focused on the loss of his hat, because if he let himself think about where he was and where he was headed, he would have started breathing fire.

Sneaking onto a Fire Nation warship was harder the second time. Months ago, he’d had a stolen uniform and the plausible deniability of being one body among hundreds freshly conscripted into the invasion force. And Uncle’s help.

He’d had Uncle last time. Zuko had never been on a ship without him.

At least the birds and the burning pirate ship made for a good distraction. Nobody noticed a stowaway when the whole port town was one thrown cabbage away from breaking into a riot. Remembering the pirate’s face at the poetic justice of his ship bursting into flames didn’t slow the chugging of Zuko’s heart nor the whistling in his brain like escaping steam, but it made him laugh. A little.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside his hiding place. Zuko stopped laughing.

Boiler rooms were loud. They were hot. They were unpleasant to spend time in. Zuko knew this from experience. He also knew from experience that most Fire Nation naval vessels had a storage space for spare parts behind the boiler that was too small to hold anything vital and too big to fill completely with the bolts and spigots. Such a space on his own ship had once held the nest of a flying ratfish and her pups. He hadn’t told the crew and, in return, she’d stopped chewing holes in their food stores. They’d had an understanding.

If Zuko were found here, he wouldn’t receive the same level of mercy.

At the thought of discovery, the whistling in his brain rose to a scream. Zuko wanted to light a flame and meditate like Uncle taught him, but he couldn’t risk firebending in a space this small and enclosed. He’d burn up all the air faster than it could come in. He’d turn this metal box into an oven. He’d let light escape through the crack under the door and be found out.

He wished Uncle were here.

The cramped space reminded him of the flowerpots in which they’d been smuggled through the desert like stolen idols. Uncle had been there, though, just a few feet away. It reminded him more of the many, many times he’d hidden from Azula. By the time Zuko was ten, she had seemed to know every nook and cranny of the palace as if trying to prove she could sneak through shadows better than her brother.

Zuko had never done it as a competition. It was just something he discovered himself to be good at. He enjoyed it. Running in shadows meant nobody saw it when he tripped and fell. He could fail and learn on his own terms, in the dark.

Once Azula found out, there was nowhere he was safe from her approaching footsteps. Not even the dark could hide him for long.

He was in the dark now. He was alone, and not by choice. He was both too big and too small. He filled what little space he had until there was no room between his ribs and the walls banding him in. Every inhale brought the sides of his container closer. They refused to fall away again. He was too big to breathe.

Over the shouting of the ship’s engine, he could swear he heard the ocean. It was everywhere. Too close, it closed over his head. If the Ocean decided to crush the vessel in its grip the way it had taken Zhao, Zuko would be invisible among the debris. He would be too small to see.

The room was hot, but Zuko wasn’t drying off. He felt like an infected wound. Seawater weighed his clothes and hair, heavy and humid. Salt crusted over his skin.

In the Earth Kingdom, they buried their dead. This must be how a corpse would feel, in a box in a tomb in the earth. Corpses couldn’t feel—unless they could. Zuko had never been dead before—unless he was now.

Darkness hung above him like a threat. A betrayal. He needed light.

Zuko lit a flame in the palm of one hand. He curled the other hand around it protectively, blocking the light from shining out under the door. The fire pulsed in time with Zuko’s heartbeat. Too fast.

He was going back to the Fire Nation.

He was about to break the terms of his banishment. Again. This time there was no hiding, nor any eventual reclamation of honor to justify the means. He was a full traitor in thought and intent as well as deed. He was gunpowder in the belly of this ship. He was a knife in the heart of his nation.

People had called him _traitor_ for years. The word had never hurt him. What had hurt were men like Zhao who made their venom personal, who called into question the possibility of his quest and the honesty of his father’s promise.

They had all been right, in the end. Capturing the Avatar was impossible. They had been right about his father, too. Azula had said as much on that ship, dangling _home_ in front of him because she knew he’d jump through flaming hoops for it.

_Azula always lies._

Home had been the lie that day—unless neither had been true. It could have been an in-between truth, not a hero’s welcome but not a traitor’s capture, either. Zuko could live with that.

Fire Lord Ozai had never done anything by half measures.

The flame swelled and thinned. Spots of light danced in the dark space around it. Zuko closed his eyes, but the starbursts remained.

It was too late to turn back now. He was a stowaway and an exile. He was a thief and a traitor. He was a story told at ports and a boy who threatened fathers to get to their children. He was a body filled with the same blood that ran through the veins of men who’d torn the world to pieces and burned what was left. He had his swords and his fire. He had a lack of luck and a wealth of will.

He—He had—

The stars behind Zuko’s eyelids flared. His flame guttered out as it drank the last of the air in the stuffy storage room.

Zuko woke with a groan and a pounding headache.

He had no way of knowing how long he’d been out. The light this deep in the ship was the same, day or night. When he opened the door a crack, a burst of what felt like the cleanest, coolest air Zuko had ever breathed washed over him.

His shirt clung wetly to his body. His hair was sweaty enough to slick back.

“Right,” he muttered. “No firebending in the tiny closet.”

He risked a step out into the boiler room proper. Even after months away, it was troublingly easy to tune out the sound of coal and steam and metal working together deep in the guts of the ship. Hearing it was like hearing his own heartbeat in his ears—which, at the moment, he could.

The ship was empty of human sounds, however. No armored boots clipping against metal floors, no casual conversations while one or both sides should be on-duty, no rhythmic breathing as coal was shoveled down the hungry throat of the engine.

Zuko took care to stay as silent as the shadows around him as he made his way through the halls of the floating prison that would be his home for the next week.

If Fire Nation manufacturing had one thing—and it had many, including a reliance upon prison labor and colonial resources—it was consistency. Each warship in a given class was identical inside and out. Zuko had lived on one much smaller than this, but the ship in Zhao’s fleet that had carried him to the North Pole was nearly identical.

He knew how to hide in a ship like this.

Zuko watched, and waited, and stole. He learned the shift rotations. He stifled his panic until it stopped breathing in the dark. He managed to take bedding from the laundry and rice from the kitchens, one handful at a time. Zuko ate enough to keep his legs steady and his eyes alert, which was more than could be said for a couple notable times in the last few months.

He passed six days and seven nights this way. In that time, he grew a great appreciation for what a difficult life that old flying ratfish must have led. He wished he could meet her again and tell her so.

Maybe he wasn’t eating as well as he should have been.

The ship made landfall without fanfare on one of the eastern islands. Zuko had no idea which island it was, but anywhere further into the interior of the archipelago would have taken another two days at least. He was good with ships and distances.

He was good with ships and a lot of things, including but not limited to moving unnoticed through them. Getting, unnoticed, _off_ of them, however, was a different kettle of pentapi.

“How long ‘til we leave for Capital City?” one sailor asked another gruffly. Zuko, braced between a pipe along the ceiling and the wall directly over the sailor’s head, paid close attention.

“Few hours,” the other replied. She hoisted a large crate onto her shoulder. “We’re taking on new cargo, maybe finding some dinner if the captain doesn’t drag us all in for another pep talk, and heading west before sunset.”

The first sailor groaned. “I thought we had all night.” The two began to walk toward the stairs.

“That’s _after_ we stop at the caldera. I swear, it’s in one ear and out the other with you—”

Their voices faded as they vanished around the corner. Zuko let himself down from the ceiling, landing silently on the metal floor. This was his only shot, then. The crew was scattered as they unloaded, but within the afternoon they would be in the same place, which happened to also be between Zuko and the shore.

Zuko heard another sailor coming—one pair of footsteps. Alone. He saw the shadow round the corner before the man did, leading with the distinct shape of a navy helmet. He took a deep breath.

_Here goes nothing._

He didn’t give the man time to cry for help. Hand over his mouth, foot to the back of his knee, arm around elbow, down to the floor with a knee in the middle of the man’s back. Easy. The Fire Navy just wasn’t what it used to be.

Zuko stuffed the man’s own shirt in his mouth and shut him in the boiler room. He didn’t take any more than the light outer armor and the helmet—the sailor could keep a bit of his dignity. It was worth nothing to Zuko to be cruel.

He walked like he knew where he was going. It felt like the first two weeks on his own ship, when he was down depth perception and half his sight, had never been on a ship at all before, and was surrounded by a crew ready to laugh themselves sick every time he embarrassed himself. He learned to walk at a clip with his head held high even if it meant striding confidently into a dead end. Bluster didn’t always convince anyone, but it stopped them laughing. Zuko knew how to bluff.

It was possible that he should have grabbed a crate first, though, to blend in.

He made it halfway down the gangplank.

“Hey!” called a voice that communicated with every syllable the clear message _I am in charge._ “Where do you think you’re going? We have unloading to—Get back here!”

The captain cut herself short when Zuko broke into a dead sprint.

He weaved through crew members unloading supplies, ducked reaching arms and moving bodies, ran up a half pyramid stack of crates as if it were a set of stairs, and leapt over a rack of spears. Two sailors carried a long container between them, marked FRAGILE in bold calligraphy. Zuko, in too much of a hurry and with too much momentum to stop himself even if he wanted to, fell to his knees, leaned back, and slid along the smooth stone of the port under the container, between the two gobsmacked soldiers.

As he flipped back to his feet and ran past the last of the crew, he caught the familiar voice of one of the sailors from earlier, flaring from quiet to a burst of noise as he passed by, say “—didn’t realize he wanted a dinner break so bad—” before he rounded the corner of a large building.

Zuko ditched the helmet in an alley. It cut off too much of his peripheral vision. The armor, he kept for now.

His stomach grumbled quietly. Zuko remembered that he still had three silver pieces rattling around somewhere in his bag. Maybe a dinner break wasn’t a bad idea.

A pair of chopsticks raised a bite of the first hot meal Zuko had eaten since he left Ba Sing Se toward his mouth.

The chopsticks clattered to the plate when a man at the next table started gasping and spitting out his own food.

“Calm down!” the woman across the table from the man scolded him. “It’s perfectly good fish.”

“Perfectly good? You just said it was from Jang Hui! Nothing dredged up from that river has been edible in years. I ought to have a talk with whoever’s in charge here—”

Zuko poked suspiciously at his own plate of fish.

“You haven’t heard?” the woman asked. “The river is clean now. The factory that pumped out all that sludge… it’s gone.”

“Oh, they moved it? That’s good, I suppose.” The man took a bite of his fish. His mustache bristled merrily.

“Nobody moved it, Shen. No humans, anyway.”

The man, apparently named Shen, leaned in close. He was still chewing an enormous bite of fish with too much relish to respond with words.

“Apparently, and this is completely true, you know my cousin Aya who works as a notary? She saw the official report about it.” The woman glanced around the restaurant. Zuko quickly averted his eyes and ate a bite of his own fish, which turned out to be so good he almost missed what she said next. “It was a spirit.”

The sound of Zuko choking on his food was only covered up by Shen doing the same.

“Spirit?” he exclaimed, only because of the mouthful of fish the word had to pass through before reaching anyone’s ears, it sounded more like _‘Sh-pr-ur?’_

“Yep. Some local spirit blew up a factory and ran the army out of town. It means we have fresh fish, though, so there’s that.”

Shen swallowed his food and chuckled.

“Too bad the Princess killed the Avatar, huh? Maybe _he_ would have saved the factory.”

“Shen!” the woman swatted him on the arm. “Don’t make jokes like that.”

“This town,” Zuko said. The couple at the table nearly fell out of their seats in surprise at the figure standing over them. He would have felt bad sneaking up on the pair, if his mind weren’t hooked into a lead. “Where is it?”

* * *

“I thought we ran _you_ people out of here,” said the old man in a red hat piloting the riverboat. He looked pointedly at the light armor Zuko wore over his chest. “The army isn’t welcome in our village anymore, so it would be better for everyone if you went about your business elsewhere.”

“I’m not—Uh, I’m a surveyor, citizen. I’m here to file… reports? To submit the… application… for formal reparations from the Fire Nation Military to your village.” Zuko nodded once to punctuate the lie.

“Reparations?” the old man raised a single, bushy white eyebrow. His dark eyes wavered over Zuko’s face. A long, tense silence passed. “Well! Why didn’t you say so? Hop aboard!”

“Thank you,” Zuko sighed with relief. He bowed to the boatman and stepped onto the ferry.

“My name’s Dock,” the old man introduced himself. “You’re coming at an excellent time for our village, young man. Things were hard after the factory moved in, but ever since the Painted Lady helped us take back our river, we’re on the up-and-up! Used to be we barely had enough to survive. Lately, we’ve started having enough fish to sell to other towns.”

As the little boat made its way into the river, Zuko saw a hulking, broken grey shape loom from the cliffs to the east.

“Was that the factory?” he asked.

It was as if the man-made structure had been turned inside-out. A tear through the front gaped like a ruinous mouth. Zuko spied movement and saw that a family of beaver-otters was busily building a dam in one of the tubes that must have once dumped wastewater into the river.

“Sure was,” Dock said pleasantly. “And here’s our little village! Welcome to Jang Hui.”

The wooden boardwalks that made up the village looked like the water beneath them would sweep the whole structure away any moment. The people looked happy enough, though with an energy that told Zuko this was a new and novel state for them to be in. The river looked tolerably clean. His only baseline for comparison when it came to bodies of water that housed spirits was the Oasis at the North Pole, and he hadn’t been paying much attention to the acid balance of the koi pond at the time.

“Thank you for the ride.” Zuko dropped a few copper pieces into Dock’s hand, the change from his meal at the port town. He had two silver pieces left.

“Let me or one of my brothers know if you need anything,” Dock said. He tipped his hat and pushed the boat away to dock it.

Huh. Maybe that was why they called him Dock.

“Excuse me,” he called to a woman passing by holding the hand of a very small boy.

She turned with the beginnings of a polite smile, which vanished in an instant when she saw the armor. She tugged the child away from Zuko and walked quickly away.

The same thing happened with the next person he tried to flag down, and the next. Even when he repeated the flimsy lie about surveying and reparations, he only got the same response:

“The Painted Lady destroyed the factory.”

“The Painted Lady drove away the army.”

“The Painted Lady will do the same to you if you stick around too long.”

“The Painted Lady—”

“Okay! I get it! I’m happy for you and your river spirit, but what happened _after_ that?”

The old man at the shop raised his bushy eyebrows. Dock had mentioned having brothers, so Zuko was unsure about addressing him by name in case this was one of them. He had a different hat on, after all.

“What do you mean? We cleaned up the river and the healthy fish started coming back. Our sick villagers have been improving now that they have clean water to drink. What happened after? Just this!” He gestured widely to the energetic town. Two laughing children ran by, in the midst of a game of tag. “Like a dream come true!”

“Since that dream came true,” Zuko asked through his teeth, forcing his voice level, “have you had any… strange visitors?”

“Like you?”

“No, not like—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Anyone asking a lot of questions about the spirit activity? Anyone who seems like they’re not who they say they are?”

“Oh! Yes!”

“Who?”

“You!”

“Ugh!” Zuko threw his hands in the air. “Alright, listen—uh…”

“Xu,” Xu said.

“Xu. I met your brother earlier. He seems nice.”

“Oh, he is! But he’s a real blabbermouth.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to keep it a secret. Nobody can know who I’m actually looking for, alright?”

“Can do.” Xu nodded seriously.

“Great.” Zuko glanced around the market. People had given him a wide berth since he set foot on the boardwalk, but he lowered his voice all the same. “Have any benders come here? Who… you know, _aren’t _from the Fire Nation.”

“Benders?” Xu’s face went blank. “I think you ought to leave now.”

“What? But—”

“Yes, Mister Fire Army man,” Xu said loudly enough to alert half the village. “It’s time for you to go. We’ve answered your questions. Please, have a free fish, on the house, and thank you for your service!”

Zuko scrambled to catch the fish Xu threw at him before it hit the wood at his feet. He’d said the village was doing better, but that seemed to be a low bar. He didn’t want to waste their generosity, even though it wasn’t _exactly_ a generous gesture.

“Please, I just need to know—”

“I’d do what he says, pal,” growled a low voice several inches above Zuko’s head. He turned to see a startlingly tall man with his arms crossed and a thunderous expression. The man wasn’t broad, but he was certainly unhappy.

Zuko could have taken him in a fight. Unfortunately, beating someone up didn’t usually convince them of your peaceful intentions.

“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll be on the next boat out of here. When does your brother’s ferry leave?”

“As soon as he gets back,” Xu said, effervescent once more.

Zuko turned to the tall man, desperately.

“I need to know about some benders that have come through here. Not firebenders. A, a waterbender. And maybe an earthbender too. If you know anything—”

There was a hand fisted around the collar of Zuko’s chest armor. The tall man leaned down to get on Zuko’s level.

“You stay away from them,” he snarled. “Your army of bullies and useless Fire Lord and ridiculous war almost wiped this village out. Those kids have done more for our people than you _ever_ have, even though they’re not from the Fire Nation.”

Zuko’s eyes widened.

“So they _were_ here,” he breathed. “How long ago? Which way did they go?”

The man’s face fell, realizing his own mistake.

“I—No, they weren’t—” His dismay turned to anger. He looked ready to tie a rock around Zuko’s neck and feed those fish everyone was raving about.

“All aboard the ferry!” called a familiar voice. Dock stepped between Zuko and the man with the iron grip on him. “Last call.”

The man let go.

“Get out, and don’t come back.”

Zuko wanted to argue. He wanted to search every crevice of this village, turn this place upside down, burn it to ash if it meant his quarry would have nowhere to hide. The impulse startled him. He hadn’t felt this way in a long time.

“I won’t,” Zuko said instead. He got on the ferry and didn’t look back.

Dock was silent throughout the entire trip to the shore.

Zuko used the time to think. The Avatar’s friends had been in Jang Hui, probably drawn to spirit troubles. Even without the Avatar, they couldn’t resist the urge to help. Zuko smiled inwardly, more grateful for their habit of stopping to assist anyone with a sob story than he had been since his days of pursuit. It had helped him play catch up then, and it helped him now.

He was grateful for more than one reason, he realized.

They had really helped this village. Zuko wasn’t sure what it was they’d done—stopped the Painted Lady from taking her anger out on any conveniently nearby humans after the factory was destroyed, maybe—but it was enough to earn the loyalty of an entire town of Fire Nation citizens. Citizens who had been severely let down, who had been _harmed_ by the needs of the war.

The war didn’t just tear wounds in the world outside the Fire Nation. It hurt its own people. _Zuko’s_ own people.

And the Avatar’s friends had helped them.

Maybe he was less of a traitor than he thought. If this was what stopping the creeping arms of Fire Nation conquest could do, it was possible that Zuko wasn’t stabbing his country in the back after all. Or, if he was, it was to cut out the rot that infected it.

“Thank you, Dock,” Zuko said when they reached the shore. He gave a deep bow and dropped his second-to-last silver piece in the old man’s hand. “Give half of that to Xu, will you? For the fish.”

Dock gave Zuko a long, suspicious look. He nodded.

As the man rowed his riverboat back to the village, Zuko heard him whistle a familiar tune. The sound echoed over the water. It was an old Fire Nation folk song, one he hadn’t heard since he was a child. The lyrics had something to do with leaves and vines.

_Little soldier boy, come marching home…_

Zuko cooked the fish Xu had given him over a campfire on the far side of the island.

He would follow the island chain west, keeping an ear out for news. It would be familiar work, if tedious and dotted with pain now that he was home-but-not-home.

Once he found the Avatar’s friends, he would be helping too. What better way to reintroduce himself to his nation? It was a small drop in the bucket of violence his family had wrought, but it was something.

The fish was delicious.

* * *

His arrival in Shu Jing came mere hours after the revered Master Piandao’s latest student vanished with the wind.

Little did the citizens of the quiet village know how literal the phrase was.

* * *

Zuko always had sharp eyes.

The copper spyglass he had picked up in the port town helped, of course. For a while, it was almost like being back on his ship—a time he didn’t miss, exactly, but one that felt more real by now than the memories of anything before. His years in the palace were half-hidden behind a haze of red like his father’s face in the throne room always was. Tracking the Avatar, though, was as crisp as the bone-dry air of winter in the South Pole.

Tracking, as a skill, was different on land than it had been by sea, but now Zuko had experience trekking alone through unforgiving wilderness. It was a synthesis of two previously-disparate parts of his life: the banished prince, the refugee.

“Black ribbon message,” Zuko murmured to himself from the top of a towering evergreen. The spindly branches this high up threatened to snap at any moment—such were the circumstances of most of Zuko’s life, whether he had always known it or not.

The bird grew from a dot in the cloudy afternoon sky. It was winging its way from the very direction Zuko’s journey had taken him for the past few days. The nearest outpost out here was in the middle of nowhere, staffed by two guards at a time and a single hawk. Any message from this corner of the nation important enough to earn a black ribbon had to be, at the very least, unusual.

Zuko had stopped allowing himself to believe in coincidences at the age of thirteen.

Spyglass stowed away, Zuko released the hand gripped tightly around the slender trunk of the tree. Immediately, the branches beneath him gave out. Soft needles whipped past him as he fell. He landed in a crouch on a thick branch below, sprinted along its length, and jumped.

Hair fell into Zuko’s eyes a moment before the throwing knife left his hand.

He wobbled, then readjusted in midair—something he hadn’t had to do since he was twelve, as high places had always been a thrill and an escape for him; he hadn’t fallen in years, but then again, he used to know to keep his hair out of his face—and caught himself by his hands on a sturdy branch the next tree over.

A brief flash of triumph flared through Zuko as he watched the black ribbon trail behind the message tube like a flag as it fell, strap cut cleanly from the back of the hawk. That feeling was doused like sand on a fire when he saw the bloody tuft of feathers falling behind it.

The hawk spiraled rapidly down, one wing pulled in awkwardly. Zuko growled under his breath.

His eyes flicked quickly from the hawk to the message and, finally, to what awaited them far below: a small river, coursing through the forest.

The hawk shrieked pitifully. Zuko made up his mind.

He dropped from the branch into a roll on the forest floor. Up in an instant, Zuko ran to the shore, jumped again, and caught the falling hawk. He landed on a slick rock that jutted just above the rushing surface of the river. His right foot slipped; his left began to twist.

Zuko steadied himself. The hawk flapped frantically in his arms. He glared down at it.

“I hope you’re happy,” he grumbled. The hawk shrieked again.

He set the hawk gently on the ground below the tree before hoisting himself up to the low branch where his pack was stored. Zuko dropped to the ground to find the hawk on its feet, hopping awkwardly with one wing still bleeding.

“Come here,” Zuko grumbled without heat. He scooped the hawk up, grateful it was domesticated and therefore used to being handled. “I’m no expert with birds, but I’ve bandaged myself up enough times that I think I know what I’m doing.”

The hawk squawked when he carefully pulled its injured wing out to see the damage.

“Oh yeah? Think you can do any better?”

The hawk glared at him.

He pulled a roll of clean linen from his pack. Bandages were a staple of traveling, as important as food. Zuko wrapped the hawk’s injured wing with attention and care. By the second layer, the cloth remained white; the bleeding had nearly stopped. He tied it tight as soon as all the broken skin was covered.

“There,” Zuko said. “No flying for a while, though. Sorry.”

The hawk chirped. It hopped from the ground to perch on Zuko’s arm.

Its proud head darted back and forth, taking in the forest setting. It had likely never landed for long anywhere but Fire Nation outposts. Zuko sighed, glancing at their surroundings himself.

A shape in the river caught his eye: black ribbon, dancing in the swift current. He set the bird down with a quiet, “Wait here,” and walked back to the shore to take a closer look. Stuck between two rocks, spinning in a small eddy, was the tube holding a message meant to fly directly to the Fire Lord.

His hands all but shook as he fished the tube from the water. His heart sank slowly as he opened it. The hinged lid had come unsealed in the fall, it seemed. Water dribbled from inside the tube. The paper within was soaked.

Zuko looked back at the hawk sitting flightless near the treeline. He thought for a moment. He walked over to where the bird and his pack awaited him and began to build a fire.

The fire crackled as Zuko bathed in the river. His wet hair fell over his eyes. It was long enough now to tickle his nose. As he left the water to dry himself by the campfire, he glanced at the hawk. Its head was tucked under its uninjured wing, peaceful and presumably whole if you only looked at it from one side.

Zuko knew he couldn’t afford another such mistake.

Lying beside the still-rolled message were the tube and the black ribbon. Zuko combed his hair back with his fingers. With the other hand, he took the ribbon and wrapped it tightly around the knot of hair. It was far shorter than the high style he’d worn before—

Before his honor flowed down a river much like this one, actually. There was something cyclical in it, and something almost like pain.

He took a deep breath.

“Now,” he muttered, reaching for the roll of paper, dried by the fire and crinkling gently with water damage. “What were you so eager to tell my father?”

He unrolled it delicately. The script inside was blurred and nearly illegible; more than half of the characters had bled into one another. He could make out the standard feudal greetings to His Majesty, Fire Lord Ozai, Son of Ilah and Fire Lord Azulon, May His Flame Burn in Perpetuity. Zuko skipped over the rest, which he could have recited from memory.

His heart tripped over itself at a set of characters—_Human,_ what might have been_ World,_ and, possibly,_ Spirit_. They pulled at a reflexive recognition: a combination that could be used to denote the Avatar.

Zuko squinted.

He turned the paper sideways, then upside-down.

Actually, he couldn’t be certain they _were_ the characters he hoped they might be. Even if he could, this way of writing it was old, practically archaic. He had never seen it in documents written more recently than seventy-six years ago, when Commander Xiu of the Ninety-Eighth Infantry burned the last great shrine to Avatar Yangchen and broke the defenses of what would become the colony of Yu Dao.

Then again, a standard Fire Nation education exposed students to few if any references to the Avatar beyond Sozin’s own official writings. If the average soldier were asked to write _Avatar—_

But there was no possessive among the blurry text, as far as he could tell. Not _friends of the Avatar,_ if it even said _Avatar_ at all. Just the title, alone. And the Avatar was dead.

Zuko shook his head. The lines swam in his vision as if the paper were still underwater. He scanned further until he reached a patch of undamaged text.

It was the location from which the hawk had been sent. Zuko looked up from the paper, from his fire, and up the path the river cut through the forest. In the distance, a bluff rose dark against the evening sky. Beyond it, there were hot springs and a natural garden of towering rock formations.

He had been headed that way anyway. It couldn’t hurt to see what the fuss was about.

* * *

Toph used to be a heavy sleeper.

There was pretty much nothing else she missed about living a life of money and monotony. Traveling the world, kicking butt and taking names, having actual friends to do that stuff with, and being a hero or whatever—all of that was amazing. She wouldn’t trade it for anything… except, maybe, the ability to conk out for ten hours straight without a care in the world.

And yeah, it was convenient to be a living alarm system. She’d love to see anyone even try to sneak up on them with the greatest earthbender in history sensing their footsteps from an earthbending-ball field away. But it was definitely less than awesome that the last few months had taught her to wake up at the slightest disturbance to the ground around her, including _every single time_ someone got up to use the bathroom.

Of all of them, somehow Aang was the worst. Sure, his footsteps were light, but he walked so lightly because of his airbending—airbending that, while it kept him off the ground, still kicked up a tiny cloud of dust and shifting pebbles. His footsteps were as fuzzy as the sand of the Si Wong desert and just indistinct enough to be really, really irritating, like a mosquito-wasp in the ear.

He was being a mosquito-wasp tonight. She thought about throwing him in the hot spring.

Aang mumbled something to Appa on his way past. Toph rolled over, hoping to catch another ten minutes of shuteye before he got back.

She didn’t get the chance.

“Uh, guys?” Toph said. She laid a hand flat against the ground, hardly believing what she was sensing.

“What is it, Toph?” Katara mumbled, rubbing her eye.

Nearby, Sokka sleepily sat up with his boomerang clutched in one fist, muttering like he’d taken another hit or two of cactus juice. They were all pretty used to rude awakenings, but some were more prepared for them than others.

Now, _this_ was a surprise. Somebody was climbing the other side of the cliff that surrounded their current hideout. Toph had only met the guy once, but she’d heard a lot about him and his uncle had made an impression. There was nobody else who held themselves quite like that, like he was ready to either throw a punch or take one any second all the time. His heartbeat was strong and a little too fast. He kept his feet more rooted than almost any non-earthbender.

Also, he was scaling a sheer cliff face one-handed. That sounded like Zuko to her.

He had something cradled in the other arm. It was small and kept moving weakly, though not like it was trying to escape. He was just on the other side of the top of the cliff, about to haul himself into the view of Toph’s sighted companions.

“There,” Toph said, pointing.

Katara’s gasp and Sokka’s incoherent noise of alarm told her she had the dramatic timing right, at least.

“Zuko,” Katara said grimly. She moved her arms in a high arc. The sound of rushing water meant there was some serious bending happening here, and a moment later the wave lifted Katara off the ground.

She had the right idea. They didn’t want anybody coming close enough to spy Aang—and not just because he was using the bathroom. Toph raised a column of earth under herself. As it rose, she grabbed Sokka by the back of the shirt to bring him with.

The three of them landed on the flat top of the cliff together. Sokka stumbled a little, but Toph steadied him with a firm palm against his shoulder. He rubbed the spot where she’d braced him, like a huge wimp, and then raised his boomerang.

Zuko’s heart rate ticked up a notch. His stance told Toph he wasn’t about to pick a fight—if anything, he was more ready to defend whatever he had in his arms than attack them. That was another surprise. Toph didn’t like surprises when they were aimed at her. She readied herself, but she wouldn’t attack until someone else did. She would wait to discover how this would all play out.

“What do you want?” Sokka demanded.

“I know you must be surprised to see me here,” Zuko said, “since the Avatar is dead and everything—”

“Actually, it _is_ kind of a surprise—Wait, what?” Sokka stammered. Toph lifted her heel off the ground an inch, ready to bring it down hard if Snoozles forgot about the whole _the world thinks Aang died_ thing. “I mean, yeah! He’s _suuuper_ dead. And it was your sister who killed him, so you’ve got a lot of nerve—”

Zuko raised a hand pleadingly.

“Before you throw me off a cliff,” he turned toward Katara and held out the bundle he carried like an offering, “can you help this bird?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who commented on the last chapter saying they were excited to see Zuko and Hakoda interact: you're welcome


	3. An Open Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Nearly double the word count of the fic so far with one new chapter? It's more likely than you think!
> 
> Please lmk in comments if you enjoy this chapter because writing it in 3 weeks flat nearly killed me <3
> 
> (also enjoy a funky little meme i made for it in the end notes)
> 
> no content warnings this time other than Standard Misadventures and Minor Peril!

“Can I _what?”_

If Toph throwing him fifty feet in the air followed by the adrenaline-inducing sight of _Zuko_ of all people hadn’t been enough to wake Sokka up, Katara’s shriek would have done it for sure. Zuko actually flinches at her tone.

“Think you could keep it down?” Zuko hisses. “I know I haven’t been here in a while, but I’m pretty sure the Fire Nation won’t be happy to see you. You’ve already almost gotten yourselves caught once today.”

Next to him, Sokka feels Toph’s posture shift.

“What are you talking about?” Katara says. She’s still got her yelling voice on, but her actual volume is lower. Sokka appreciates that. “No, never mind, I don’t care. You just can’t stop yourself, can you? Following us even after your family took away the last of the hope in the world? It still wasn’t enough for you, was it? Congratulations! You’ve got us in your little Fire Nation clutches! I bet you’re _so_ excited to drag us to your dad and tell him what a great job you did finding a bunch of kids practically on his doorstep! Well, it’s not happening. We’ve beaten you before and we’ll do it again until you get it through your stupid skull! Just—Just get out of here, Zuko! Why…” Her voice tapers off, anger giving way to confusion and pain. Sokka hates that sound. “Why aren’t you doing anything? Why isn’t he _doing _anything?”

Sokka looks from his sister’s furious face to Zuko, who looks a little like someone just hit him in the back of the skull—a sight with which Sokka is extremely familiar. His hair is up in a stupid little ponytail on top of his head. He has some kind of weapon sheathed behind his back, though, so Sokka isn’t ready to write him off just yet.

Sokka shrugs.

“I—I have this—” Zuko holds the hawk up a little higher.

“Shut up! About! The bird!” Katara presses fists to her temples. “At least attack us if you have to keep talking.”

“I’m not going to attack you!” Zuko snaps, sounding like he’d love to do just that. His eyes slide to Sokka and Toph. “Does anyone else feel like threatening me? Let’s get it over with.”

“I’m still processing,” Sokka admits. Next to him, Katara does some weird sort of deep breathing exercise that makes her sound like a beached whale. “You know, that you’re actually… here.”

“That makes sense,” Zuko admits awkwardly, “I _am _still banished, so.”

“Oh. I forgot about that.”

“I didn’t know that at all,” Toph adds helpfully.

“Then why—?”

“I’ll be honest,” Sokka shrugs, “I kinda assumed you were dead.”

“Yeah. We totally thought you kicked the bucket, Sparky.”

Zuko gapes at them. “I—I’m not.”

“Clearly,” says Katara, surfacing from her self-taught anger management class. “Now give me the bird.”

Katara refuses to let Zuko out of her sight. Sokka respects this decision. Just because the bird is injured and, you know, a bird doesn’t mean it isn’t part of a nefarious Fire Nation plot. _Enemy birds,_ he reminds himself.

She drags the Prince of Jerks down toward the water—the river that winds past the opposite side of the bluff, not the pool next to their camp even though that would be a lot closer—with a pointed glance at Sokka and Toph, then at Appa’s sleeping shape below. Toph obviously misses the look, but she still manages to catch on before Sokka does.

He’s tired, okay?

“We should go make sure Zuko doesn’t start _looking_ through our _stuff,_” she mutters quietly.

“Why would he do—”

Toph punches him in the arm. The metaphorical lantern lights over Sokka’s head.

“Oh! Right! Yes, yep, gotta go hide our _stuff_ from Zuko.” He winks. Then he feels really stupid for winking.

With a few quick jabs, Toph makes a staircase leading down to their camp. As they go, Sokka hears Katara’s distant, furious voice echo around the rock formations: “Did you _stab_ this _hawk?”_

“We need to know how Zuko found us,” Sokka says. The gears in his brain have finally started turning. There will be a lot of work to do. This is _just_ what they needed, another delay in the schedule. “As long as Katara doesn’t kill him first,” he adds.

“That could be bad.”

“Why?” Sokka asks. “He’s _literally_ the prince of all jerks. We’ve already had to deal with his even scarier sister and her friends, plus moving incognito through enemy territory with the _Avatar,_ and now the guy who burns down villages for fun and apparently stabs random birds just broke the law in his own country to chase us—Huh. Why didn’t we think of hiding from Zuko in the Fire Nation earlier? That would have been the last place he—Never mind. My point is, we don’t need any more problems, and I’m pretty sure Zuko has been a massive pain in the neck since the day he was born.”

“Because, Sokka,” Toph says in her _you’re a stubborn idiot so I’m going to prove I’m right by being even more stubborn_ voice, which she usually reserves for Katara, “weren’t you listening? He said ‘the Fire Nation won’t be happy to see you.’ The _Fire Nation._ Not ‘my father,’ not ‘my country.’ And he wasn’t lying. He’s not supposed to be here, he didn’t attack us—”

“Hey, guys,” Aang’s tired but chipper voice interrupts Toph with a yawn. They’ve reached camp just in time to meet him coming back from his bathroom break. “I heard Katara shouting. What’s happening?”

“You might want to sit down for this one, buddy,” Sokka says gently. “I don’t know how to tell you, but—”

“Zuko’s here,” Toph tells him bluntly. “Katara’s healing a bird for him.”

Aang blinks.

“Sorry,” he laughs. “I must be more tired than I thought. It _sounded_ like you just said—”

“Yep,” Sokka confirms. “Zuko. And a bird. Look, I’m as lost as you are.”

“And you left Katara _alone_ with him?” Aang yelps. He tugs at his short hair.

“Relax,” Toph waves his concern away. “My feet are keeping an eye on them. Zuko’s just sort of… sitting there.”

“Really?” Sokka asks. “Are they saying anything?”

“I can’t hear them any better than you can,” Toph grouses. A smirk twitches the side of her mouth. “But from the feel of it, Katara’s been yelling at him for about two minutes.”

“Good.” Sokka crosses his arms. Aang looks like he’s about to fly over there and help Katara skip Zuko across the water like a flat rock. “She can handle herself, Aang. Toph and I came down here to make sure _you_ were safe.”

“Fine,” Aang agrees grumpily. He sits down, arms and legs crossed, and glares in the general direction of the cliff hiding Katara and Zuko. “How did he find us? It’s been months.”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Are they almost done, Toph?”

Sokka glances over and sees Toph cinch her brows. She cocks her head, slides one foot a few inches over, and says, “Huh.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s just,” Toph’s brows rise, “Katara stopped yelling. They’re talking to each other. Like… normal people.”

“What is going _on?_” Aang groans. He covers his face with his hands and falls backward into the side of Appa’s leg.

“It’s a scar. It can’t be healed.” Zuko turns his head as if trying to hide the scar in question.

“This—” For half a moment, Katara’s mind lights up with the potential to _help._ She’s ready to reach excitedly for the spirit water—until she remembers. “Oh. Right.”

“Thank you, though,” he says. It’s stilted and awkward, but still an expression of gratitude from _Zuko._ Katara wonders if she ate some bad sea slug recently and all of this is a weird dream. “It’s kind of you to offer.” He pauses, then adds, “since I’m dead and all.”

“I didn’t actually think you were dead,” she hastens to reassure him.

“You didn’t?” He meets her eyes.

Zuko is still on his knees, legs folded under himself, a carefully safe distance away. Katara can see the emotive side of his face now. He’s hard to read, but the fact that Zuko is capable of expressing any emotion other than anger is enough of a shock to highlight every twitch of muscle in his pale face.

“No way. If nothing we went through last winter could kill you, I knew we weren’t getting rid of you that easily.” Katara laughs awkwardly, then realizes Zuko might not consider this a deep well of comedy. “Sokka said something like that about you once too,” she adds, swirling a small stream of water for the newly-healed hawk to peck at. “I’m not sure what changed his mind.”

“The last time you all saw me, I wasn’t…” Zuko hesitates. “Doing great,” he finally lands on.

“Oh.” Katara thinks back—Zuko, kneeling on the dusty ground, seeming somehow smaller than he’d ever been, pain tearing his voice and a flash of fire. “_Oh,_ oh my goodness, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think to ask. How’s your uncle? Is he…?”

“He’s fine,” Zuko says quickly. Katara breathes a sigh of relief, knowing the guilt would have been enormous if the man had died when she could have stayed to heal him. “He’s in Ba Sing Se.”

“Ba Sing Se?” The emotional whiplash loosens Katara’s hold on the water. The hawk squeaks in protest at being splashed, but she hardly notices over the sudden reminder that Zuko’s uncle is also the Fire Lord’s brother. “Did he—When the Wall fell and Azula—”

“No! We were there for weeks. Months. Before it happened. He, uh,” Zuko rubs the back of his neck, “runs a tea shop.”

“A tea shop,” Katara repeats flatly.

“You were still in the city, right? When, um.” He winces.

“When your sister murdered my friend?” Katara pins him with her most withering stare. It’s not hard to muster up anger about Aang’s sort-of-death. The fact that he's alive and perky as ever a hundred feet away doesn’t soften the look she sends Zuko’s way.

“Yeah…” Zuko looks uncomfortable and—really young. She’d forgotten, or maybe never realized in the first place, that he can’t be more than a couple years older than her. “Well, if you’ve ever heard of the Jasmine Dragon, that’s Uncle! Best… best tea in the Upper Ring. Apparently.”

He shoots a twitchy, lopsided expression at her, one that looks like it’s trying and failing miserably to be a friendly smile. It gives up the ghost after a few brief seconds.

“I’m sorry,” he adds. His voice is an even keel, the same sincerity as his confession about his mother. “For what it’s worth, I wish it hadn’t happened.”

A vindictive part of Katara wants to spit _So you could capture him yourself?_ but she can’t bring herself to do it.

“It’s not worth much,” she grumbles instead. “But thanks. Me too.”

Zuko nods. He shifts closer. Katara’s hands twitch toward her waterskin before she realizes Zuko isn’t even looking at her, but at the hawk. He reaches out a hand and whistles gently.

The bird tilts its head before hopping right to Zuko’s outstretched fingers. It holds its injured wing askew. Katara wishes she could have worked on it sooner, or that Zuko hadn’t done such an abysmal job bandaging it.

_I mean, really, _she thinks, already having given him a lecture about it but strongly considering doing it again. There had been feathers stuck deep in the wound and no attention paid to where the joints were on the animal, how it differed from a human arm. She’s glad the wrappings kept dirt out of it on the trip here, but everything else? _Ugh._

The sour taste of irritation dries up in her mouth as she watches Zuko run his knuckles over the top of the hawk’s head.

“We should get back,” he says quietly. It takes Katara a second to realize he’s talking to her and not the hawk. “So your friends don’t think I kidnapped you.”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” Katara scoffs. “You’re… staying?”

Zuko hangs his head with a sigh. The hand not on the hawk clenches into a fist against the ground.

“Yeah. As long as you don’t kill me first.”

“I won’t,” Katara blurts. “I can’t make any promises about Sokka or Toph, though.”

“They’re coming back!” Toph shouts, hands flat against the ground.

Aang perks up. He stops the weird, anxious fidgeting he’d been doing with his fingers and floats to his feet on a quick sweep of air.

“Aang, you need to hide,” Sokka says sternly. He points to the dark area past Appa. “Get behind the bathroom rock!”

“No.” Aang digs in his heels, both metaphorically and literally, which Sokka is really starting to wish Toph hadn’t taught him how to do.

“Be reasonable. I thought you were over this! Keeping you secret is the biggest advantage we have. You know, for when we save the world?”

“This isn’t about the world,” Aang argues. “It’s _Zuko.”_

“Yes! Exactly! It’s Zuko, whose _dad _is the guy you’re going to take down in a few weeks.”

“I at least want to hear what he has to say.”

“Sure,” Sokka concedes, “fine. You can listen to what he has to say, from _over behind the bathroom rock._”

“But—Aah!”

Aang’s argument is cut short when the ground underneath him pitches and shifts. At the same time, a column of rock lifts the sleeping Appa’s tail. Aang tumbles back. Toph drops Appa’s tail over top of Aang like a thick blanket. Sokka hears a muffled _“oof”_ from beneath it.

Toph shrugs.

“We don’t have that kind of time,” she says.

“Hi!” Katara’s voice echoes from the top of the cliff. “We’re coming down now!”

Standing next to her is Zuko who, much to Sokka’s annoyance, has not been frozen in a block of ice. He also has a hawk perched on his shoulder. The fact that it makes him look really, really cool only irritates Sokka further.

They take the earthen stairs Toph bent several minutes ago. Katara hurries down with Zuko trailing behind her. She _turns her back_ on him, which has Sokka questioning his sister’s judgement more than he has in—Okay, it hasn’t been _that_ long since he’s questioned Katara’s judgement, but he’s an older brother. It’s basically his job.

Sokka doesn’t draw his sword. He does sling the sheath over his shoulders, just in case.

“Don’t come any closer,” Sokka warns him once he’s on the ground.

Toph jabs her hands forward, fingers splayed in that weird way that makes it look like her joints are extending and kind of freaks Sokka out; the staircase collapses back into the cliff. Zuko turns to watch the stones of his only exit shudder and still—Sokka smirks. If he wants to leave before answering their questions, he’ll have to go through the three of them first. Serves the jerk right.

Katara, proving herself to be the smart and practical sister Sokka sometimes has to remind himself she is, leaves Zuko to come closer and stand next to Toph. She glances back at him first, though, with one of those soft, sympathetic Katara-looks, so Sokka deducts a few percentage points from his constantly-fluctuating allotment of brotherly respect.

“How did you find us?” Sokka demands.

“It’s kind of a long story. Oh, and, um,” he glances at Katara and then back to Sokka, “I’m sorry my sister killed the Avatar.”

He has the…gall? Stupidity? Utter lack of self-awareness? Sokka doesn’t even _know_ what, but he has the _something_ to bow at them in apology like he broke a vase in his great-aunt’s house instead of being sad that his evil sister supposedly murdered a twelve-year-old.

There’s a sound of shifting over in the direction of Appa’s backside. Toph’s foot moves. The shifting stops.

“I don’t care how long the story is.” Sokka crosses his arms. “We’ve got all night.”

“Actually, you might not.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Toph’s voice is slow and level. Sokka has to bite back a smile—the angry freak is in for it now.

“It means you got yourselves spotted by an army outpost. This hawk,” he points at the hawk in question as if they might have forgotten it was there, “was carrying a message to the Fire Lord. About you.”

“The Fire Lord knows we’re here?” Sokka does _not_ yelp. The words come out in a very dignified tone worthy of a warrior, which also happens to include the first time his voice has cracked in five weeks and four days. New record.

“No,” Zuko says, “because I stopped it.” The bird squawks as if in admonishment. “You shut up.”

“Hey! Don’t tell me to shut up! Who’s doing the interrogating here?”

“I was—” Zuko scowls. The moon is waning but bright and the air is clear on this mostly-empty island, all the light of the night sky reflecting off the pool of the hot spring, so Sokka is gleefully able to see the way Zuko’s face turns red. “I was talking to the hawk,” he mumbles.

Katara _laughs._ And yeah, Sokka’s done his fair share of laughing at Zuko, it’s true—usually when he’s just been hit with a boomerang, or a water whip, or Aang’s staff, or a lot of other things, hey, how many concussions have they probably given Zuko by now, anyway?—but she doesn’t even sound like she’s mocking him.

“Right. And now that Katara has fixed your feathery friend’s wing, you’re going to send it straight to the palace? You realize we can’t let you do that, right?”

“I won’t!” Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s not why I asked her to heal it. I’ve been following you. I intercepted the hawk, but I didn’t know for sure until I got here—”

“You were _still_ following us?” Katara jumps into the interrogation, finally. “We were in Ba Sing Se for almost two months. And we weren’t exactly in hiding.”

“I know. I found one of the flyers when you lost your bison.”

“When were _you_ in Ba Sing Se?” Sokka asks.

“The same time we were, for a couple months,” Katara explains. “His uncle runs a tea shop now.”

_“What?”_ Sokka is proud of his own outburst, because it covers up a similar, if muffled, one from under Appa’s tail.

“I wasn’t trying to capture the Avatar!” He hesitates. “Mostly. And then I set your bison free and I was in a coma for a while and then I was serving tea and things were really good and _then_ the Fire Nation invaded and I thought I was going to get arrested for treason but Uncle wouldn’t burn my face and—”

“Woah, woah,” Sokka strongly considers physically covering Zuko’s mouth, because that is not only more words than he’s ever heard the guy say at once, but a motley assortment of things that either cannot be true or make less sense than his memories of the infamous cactus juice journey. “Back up.”

“To…” Zuko looks from Sokka, to Katara, to Toph, to Appa, and back to Sokka. “To which part?”

“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Katara suggests.

Almost immediately, Sokka wishes she hadn’t.

“I don’t really care how old you were the last time you saw your mother. Skip to the good part!”

“Sokka!”

“I didn’t mean skip _that_ far ahead. What did you do to get banished, anyway?”

“Wait, I want to hear more about how he kicked this Zhao guy’s butt. You guys never tell me _anything_ this cool when you talk about what happened before I joined up!”

“They blew up your ship? That’s awful! Sokka, stop laughing.”

“Hey, serves him right for siccing those pirates on _us.”_

“Azula is like that to everyone? Even her own family?”

“When it’s me? _Especially_ her family.”

“Can I have some water? I’ve been talking for a long time.”

“Sorry, ostrich-horse thieves don’t get water.”

“I said I regretted that!”

“Doesn’t give that poor family a new ostrich-horse, does it? Now keep going. I want to hear more about this earthbender’s shoddy technique. Getting knocked down by a little fire blast? Pathetic.”

“I know about this part.”

“Oh. Right. You were there.”

“Yeah, that too. But I meant that I was hanging out with your uncle while you were off getting beat up by your sister and Aang at the same time.”

“You—Huh?”

“Less asky, more talky, Hothead.”

“That’s _amazing!”_

“Wha—Who said that?”

“Uh, it was me! Sorry, I have something in my throat. Ahem. Hem, hem. Voice changing. Puberty, am I right? Definitely nobody else here. Nobody who should _really_ keep his _voice down._”

“Uh.”

“Tell me more about all the stuff you stole! I always knew you’d turn out to be a criminal.”

“And _how_ did this guy know you two were firebenders, again?”

“He saw Uncle heating his tea.”

“Didn’t you work in a tea shop?”

“No, no way. I’m a pretty open-minded guy, but breaking into Lake Laogai? Getting back out again? _With_ Appa? I’m not buying it.”

“Actually, he’s not lying.”

“Well, I’m sure it only worked because we distracted the Dai Li first.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“I thought the Water Tribe fleet might be in Chameleon Bay,” Zuko says. Aang is getting used to his weird pauses. He suspects Zuko is taking a sip from Katara’s waterskin, which makes him laugh behind his hand because her bending water always leaves a weird aftertaste. That’s probably why Toph relented on the water issue. “I found the captured ship, and I spoke with your father.”

“Oh, no! The Fire Nation knows about the captured ship? We have to get a message to dad right—”

“Have you even been _listening,_ Sokka? He’s not with the Fire Nation anymore.”

As much as Aang knows caution is important right now—and with Zuko especially—he can’t help but take Katara’s side. Zuko just spent an hour telling them a story about his last few months that, while stilted and leaving out pretty much anything resembling details until repeatedly prompted, was obviously truthful. He hardly painted himself in the best light, and he sounded genuinely remorseful about some of the meaner things he did on the run in the Earth Kingdom. Toph would have said something if he’d lied, anyway.

He’s curious why Zuko left out the part about saving him from Zhao, though. Maybe because he thinks talking about Aang directly will make his friends sad? Being presumed dead really stinks.

“Right. Forgot about that.” Sokka sounds more embarrassed than relieved. Aang wishes he could give him a gentle pat on the shoulder. That always helps.

“He told me you were going to the Fire Nation. I stowed away on a ship and followed your trail across the last couple islands. I saw the black ribbon message, intercepted this hawk, and… now I’m here,” he finishes awkwardly. “Hello.”

“Our dad just _told you_ where we’re going? How did you get him to do that?” Katara has been the nicest of all of them to Zuko so far—Aang smiles, distracted for a second thinking about how nice Katara is—but even she sounds suspicious about this development.

“I broke into his quarters and he didn’t figure out who I was. Or, he kind of did. I guess.”

“Yeah,” Toph drawls, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m gonna need a little more explanation than that. Hakoda’s a tough cookie and he’s not an idiot. What did you do to him?”

_“Chief_ Hakoda,” Sokka mutters.

“You literally call him ‘dad’!”

“‘Cause he’s my dad!”

The interaction sounds like the million little well-worn arguments the group have between them, but Aang has never heard Toph and Sokka bicker about this one before. It hits him that they probably had this conversation on the ship, where Chief Hakoda steered a stolen battle cruiser through enemy waters in enemy armor and fought to protect not only his own children but all the rest of them too, including Aang, who was half-dead and hidden and not _around_ to needle Sokka about addressing his dad with the proper respect.

He let Azula win and let the world down and let them carry his body when he should have been able to fly himself, and suddenly the most upsetting part of it all is that he missed out on silly arguments and inside jokes. It feels like losing pieces of his family.

Maybe Zuko would understand. From the sound of it, he’s been mostly alone for a long time. But Aang can’t even join in on the interrogation—he knows better than to wish it were anything else—because he has to keep hiding under Appa’s itchy tail.

That’s not Appa’s fault. He’s due for a bath soon, maybe while they’re here at the hot spring. Aang risks reaching an arm out from under the tail and patting the furry side. Appa rumbles quietly.

“I didn’t do anything to him!” Zuko snaps. Aang is starting to notice the different types of Zuko-yelling. This one is defensive and guilty—but what for? “Okay, I fought him. A little bit.”

There it is.

“You attacked our dad?” Katara and Sokka say in unison. Aang wishes he could see their faces. They both _hate_ it when that happens.

“He attacked _me!_ I told him I wanted to help you. We made a deal. Oh, and he helped me bandage a burn.”

“Let me see that,” Sokka says. There’s the sound of shuffling, a few seconds of silence, and then a deep sniff. “Whew! Yeah, that’s Water Tribe burn cream.”

“What happened to your wrist?” Katara asks sympathetically.

Zuko mumbles something Aang can’t catch through the thick weight of Appa’s tail. Sokka and Toph burst out laughing. After a second, he hears Katara’s quiet giggles—a sound Aang would know anywhere.

Aang risks lifting the edge of Appa’s tail. Through the little strip of light, he sees Zuko’s silhouette against the moonlight reflecting off the spring. He’s sitting, arms crossed, face turned away crankily. The hawk pecks at the ground near his knee. Toph shifts to lean on one arm, blocking Aang’s view of Zuko almost entirely.

He frowns. Then it clicks.

Blocking Zuko’s view of Aang.

He frowns more.

“So his story checks out,” Sokka continues. “Any lies?”

“Yes,” Toph says grimly. Aang’s heart leaps into his throat.

“I _knew_ it. You lying piece of Fire Nation—”

“He lied about being good at making tea.”

“Huh?” Just past the edge of Appa’s fur, Aang sees Sokka’s mouth hanging open.

“What’s the truth, Sparky?” Toph doesn’t acknowledge Sokka’s flabbergasted tone. “How bad were you at tipped-wage customer service?”

“I broke three teapots,” Zuko confesses.

“Wow.”

“But I wasn’t sleeping well, and people are so _rude_ to waitstaff. I mean, I’ve been rude to waitstaff too, but I’m rude to everyone! So it doesn’t count.”

“Yes, it does,” Katara says.

Aang lets Appa’s tail fall over him again to make sure the sound of his laughter is muffled.

“Okay,” Sokka says in his Plan Guy Voice. “We’re going to need some time to discuss as a group.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier,” Zuko objects. “You might not have time. I stopped one hawk, but any soldier worth the price of coal would send another behind it. We have to move on.”

“‘We’?”

“I, well,” Zuko stammers. “You need to hide, and I’m breaking the law by being here. And I was wanted as a traitor before I did that. So we both need to move on. And I was hoping… we could move on… together?”

“Together.” Sokka is employing a rhetorical strategy wherein he repeats back what Zuko just said in a flat, sarcastic tone. Aang is very impressed.

“I can help you. I have a lot of fighting experience, and I’m considered to be pretty good at it. I mean,” he sounds slightly smug, “you’ve seen me. You know, when I was attacking you? Uh, right, I guess I should apologize—”

“What is it you _want,_ Zuko?” It’s a good thing Sokka is here, Aang thinks. None of the rest would have the impatience to make him get to the point. “You come here carrying an evil bird, tell us your whole life’s story, start bragging about how good you are at shooting fireballs, and then say you want to help. What are you asking us to do? What are you trying to accomplish?”

“I don’t know!”

Things go so quiet Aang peeks out from under Appa’s tail again just to make sure nobody died.

“I thought,” Zuko says, one hand rubbing over his face, “that everything would be okay once I found you. I didn’t think this far ahead.” He sounds really, really tired.

“So, what?” Katara chimes in, gentler than Sokka. She sounds more confused than accusatory. “You left Ba Sing Se to go back to the only thing you knew how to do? Chasing us again was easier than finding a new life?”

“Not easier,” Zuko shakes his head. “I feel like it’s my responsibility. To find you all. Not to turn you in, but because you’re the only people I know of who seem to care about ending this war.”

“Since when do _you_ want to end the war?” Sokka asks.

“Since a lot more recently than I should have. I didn’t care about it before. It was my father’s war, and it was the reason—” He takes a deep breath. “But it has to end. The war _is_ my father’s. And his father’s, and his father’s. It’s _my_ family’s war, so I have a duty to do what I can to stop it.”

“Sure would have been nice if you’d felt that way _before_ the Avatar snuffed it,” Toph says casually. Aang, who’d felt the tiniest stirrings of empathy and understanding and maybe a few tears a second ago, winces.

Zuko winces too. Toph wasn’t even being mean—by Toph standards—but he looks like she just slapped him. He hangs his head. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t jump to defend himself or make excuses or repeat how sorry he is that Aang is dead.

Aang silently reminds himself he isn’t dead. He kind of wishes he could tell Zuko that, if only to stop him from looking so ashamed.

He won’t. They can’t exactly trust him with a secret like that. But still, the guy has been through a lot. He looks like he could use some good news.

“How about this,” Sokka suggests. “We take the night to talk it over—”

Zuko raises his head, scowling. “I told you, there could be—”

“And you keep watch,” Sokka finishes.

Zuko blinks.

“That’s a good idea!” Katara says. “You said you wanted to help us, right? And you’re already in trouble if anyone finds you here. So you can keep an eye out for danger, and if you do a good job as a lookout, we could let you come with us.”

“Not so fast—” Sokka tries to interrupt her.

“I haven’t had a bodyguard since I left home,” Toph says thoughtfully. “I bet you’d be more fun to mess with than they were.”

“We’re not making Zuko our _bodyguard._”

“I think it sounds like something we should ‘discuss as a group,’” Katara says. “You know, not in front of Zuko?”

“Do you want me to,” Zuko points a thumb over his shoulder, toward the high bluff, “go?”

“Yes,” Sokka says without hesitation.

“Just up to the cliff,” Katara softens the dismissal. “We’ll come get you in the morning.”

Zuko nods. He stands up, slings his bag over his shoulder, and hesitates. Aang holds his breath.

He reaches down to let the hawk hop onto his forearm, seemingly deciding against whatever it was that gave him pause.

“Nuh-uh,” Sokka says. “Leave the bird. You’re not sending any messages to your dad tonight.”

Zuko’s frown scrunches up his whole face. Aang worries that he’ll fight Sokka on it, but he just huffs one of his angry growling sounds through his nose and turns away. Aang can’t hear his footsteps after Zuko disappears beyond his narrow field of vision—that makes sense, super stealthy sword guy and all.

He does hear the rumble of stone that follows Toph’s swimming dragon hands—if Aang even _thought_ about trying that form while sitting down, Toph would encase his feet in rock and make him hike up a mountain, but the student is not the master—and Zuko’s quiet, begrudging, “Thanks” that echoes off the cliff walls.

A few minutes pass in silence.

“Okay,” Toph says. “You can come out now, Twinkletoes.”

Aang airbends Appa’s tail off of him with a deep, grateful breath.

“Appa needs a bath,” he announces to his friends. “But I guess that’ll have to wait.”

The sky is purple-grey at the edges. Dawn is a long way off, but Zuko has his swords even if his firebending sleeps like simmering coals in his stomach.

Treetops and ragged bluffs interrupt the starry sky. He imagines the stars are his meditation candles. They burn, too, and they are many and small from so far away. He wonders if they dapple down a diluted form of the same power as the sun on firebenders like Zuko, who are as likely to stay awake under their light as sleep.

Somewhere behind him, the moon sinks.

Apart from the single outpost, this island is uninhabited. The word is a strange one to apply to such a place. The trees whisper in the wind like gossiping nobles. Owlcats hoot and screech. Water, bubbling up from underground like it wants to see the world, runs in ecstatic paths from one shore to the other and back.

There are no signs of encroaching violence in the inhabited night. Stealth is not the habit of Zuko’s nation. Aggression is praised among its military—and among its royals. Arrogance comes alongside it. At least, as much was true of Zhao, who never suspected stealth to be an option.

As much is true of Azula too, though she has enough of a brain to watch for movement in the shadows. If Zuko were more like his sister, he would send ribbons of fire into the spaces between the trees where chittering creatures might well be men.

If Zuko were more like his sister, he would burn the forest to ash. Then there would be nowhere to hide.

He imagines pale moonlight on a field of pale ashes. All the color gone from the world. All the sound, silenced.

Dark wings pass close enough to ruffle Zuko’s hair. The owlcat loops through the air behind him. It reappears to alight on the cliff a dozen feet from Zuko, eyes luminous and huge. They take in all the miniscule light the night has to offer and turn it outward again. It studies Zuko; he studies it right back.

The owlcat takes off silently. It vanishes into the gossiping forest, another moving shape among others: black over black over black.

The island is neither empty nor silent, but it is safe. For now.

Zuko keeps watch.

* * *

“Hey,” Katara says. She’s quiet—small stature, light feet, as free-flowing over the ground as her element. Zuko heard her coming, but barely.

“Hello,” he says. The sun blazes in his eyes.

“I brought you some breakfast.”

Zuko turns, presuming this to be as close to a relief of duty as he’s likely to get. Katara holds out a small, wooden bowl of rice.

He’s tempted to refuse, to tell her he has food in his bag. It’s not a lie; he gathered tree nuts on his way up to the hot spring the day before. They were small handfuls, though, and the white jade debacle still hangs in the back of Zuko’s mind. It’s almost funny with the gift of hindsight.

Almost.

He accepts the bowl.

“Does this mean you’re not going to kill me?” Zuko asks, only half joking. He takes a bite—it’s cold and a little dry, but palatable.

“Sokka _did _suggest that I could poison your food.”

Zuko chokes.

“I didn’t!” Katara says. She hides a laugh behind her hand.

Zuko glares. That would be just the way for him to go: done in by his former enemies the second he stops attacking them.

“Come on.” Her voice turns serious. “We have things to talk about.”

“I can’t believe I was out-voted,” Sokka grumbles for the fifteenth time. “Aang shouldn’t even _get_ a vote.”

“We’ve been over this,” Toph yawns. “Just because Aang’s legally dead doesn’t mean he loses the right to fair and equal representation.”

“Yeah, Sokka,” Aang says. “The monks always taught me to respect the wisdom of the dead.”

“For a corpse, you sure are chatty,” Sokka snipes back.

“Shut up!” Toph says. “Aang—”

“Yeah, yeah. Behind the bathroom rock. I’m going. Ugh.”

“Heh,” Sokka laughs, “serves you right for—Momo! Leave that bird alone, you don’t know where it’s been!”

“Welcome, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. Today, this council of judges decides your fate!”

Toph throws her hands in the air, atop the pedestal of stone, as if urging on an invisible and inaudible audience. Below, Sokka imitates a horn section heralding Zuko’s judgement.

“Toph,” Katara says. Her face is completely hidden behind her own hands. “Get down from there.”

“Fine,” Toph huffs. To Sokka, loudly enough everyone on the island can hear her, she says, “First she skips rehearsal, now she won’t even let me get to the big finish?”

“There, there.” Sokka pats her on the head.

Watching all of them is Zuko, who has a look on his face like he’s about to throw up. Sokka hopes it’s nerves and not a new, fresh flavor of anger they’ve never managed to elicit from him before.

“We talked it over for most of the night, and we’ve come to a decision that _most of us_,” Katara shoots a look at Sokka, “can agree on.”

“Hey.” Sokka puts his hands up. “I’m not fighting you on it, am I? Like I said, whatever gets the job done—”

“Just spit it out!” Zuko shouts. “Tell me what you’re going to do to me and get it over with.”

And that throws Sokka. The yelling, not so much, but the words and the way Zuko’s voice breaks just a tiny bit… Anger, he was prepared for, and nervousness even, because the guy is clearly a bad liar but he’s still a _liar,_ he has to be, so it tracks that he might get stage fright before a big lie.

It didn’t occur to Sokka that Zuko might be afraid.

“You can’t come with us,” Toph says.

Zuko’s eyes close. His face tightens with an expression like pain.

“But,” she continues, “if you want to show off those Avatar-hunting skills, we’re not gonna stop you.”

“What Toph means,” Katara chimes in, “is that when we have to move on, we’ll fly ahead on Appa and you can meet up with us next time we stop.”

“How will I know where you’re going?”

“Because _you’re_ going to pick our next campsite.” Sokka smugly unfurls his favorite map of the Fire Nation—he has a decent collection of them by now. This one indicates elevation and the mapmaker clearly knew their color theory. Most people in this country will slap red-on-red like they don’t even _care_ about saturation. A good map should be easy on the eyes as well as useful, in Sokka’s expert opinion.

“Me?”

“Do you see any other suspicious firebenders around here? Yes, you.” Sokka points to the next island on his schedule, which they’re hoping to reach by sunset. “We’re heading here today. So far, we’ve been flying as far as we can in a day and picking the most isolated place we can find when it’s time to stop. But _now_ we have our very own Fire Nation spy to tell us where to land!”

Zuko stares at Sokka for a long few seconds. His eyes are bright amber, nearly gold. Sokka has never noticed that before—he’s never been this close to Zuko by choice before, and in the past he was a little distracted by the permanent squint of his scar.

A man looks another man in the eye; Sokka doesn’t break contact.

Finally, Zuko nods.

“It’s mainly inhabited on the eastern side,” he says, “so you’ll want some cover as you come in.” He points out a shallow cove and a swath of the island where the occasional lava flow prevents all but sparse settlement.

The guy knows his geography, Sokka will give him that.

Zuko and Sokka are still squabbling over whatever’s on one of Sokka’s fancy sheets of paper.

Toph will admit the maps are useful—she can’t sense from one island to the next with any greater accuracy than ‘there’s definitely a volcano there,’ which, by the way, the changeability of a country built on an active volcanic arc is a step up from the sandpit of the Si Wong desert but not by much—but the boys have been talking themselves in circles for ten minutes.

“He’s not lying, Sokka,” Toph reminds him. She bends a rock into a miniature version of Appa for the fifth time. Sitting around while her friends—her _friend_ and the guy who used to chase her friends—butt heads over which cave they’re going to sleep in tonight is boring. Her sculpting is getting better, though.

“How do you know that?” Zuko asks. Suspiciously.

A _lot_ of suspicion coming from that corner of camp: Sokka suspicious of Zuko, Zuko suspicious of Toph, Toph suspicious of… Okay, Toph isn’t suspicious of anybody, because suspicion just means you’re too much of a coward to do anything about it or too much of an idiot to wait for things to shake out, but there’s still two-thirds of a suspicion triangle happening here.

It’s going to get real tiring real quick, she can already tell.

“Doesn’t matter,” Toph shrugs, because ‘not suspicious’ doesn’t mean the same thing as ‘tell him all my secrets.’ “If it’s important, you’ll find out.”

“We’re running pretty far behind schedule,” Katara points out. “Let’s take what Zuko said and get going.”

Toph wants to throw a second secret dance party.

She should ask Twinkletoes when Katara’s birthday is. He always says the monks didn’t celebrate birthdays, but there’s no way he doesn’t have hers memorized. Toph settles for bending a little figure of Katara out of some pebbles. It’ll either make for a great gift or a fun way to taunt her, depending on how Toph feels later.

“Fine,” Sokka agrees grumpily.

“Before you go,” Zuko says, “could you, um.”

“What?”

“Could you give me a ride back to my boat?”

“Did you steal that too?” Toph asks, hoping the answer is yes. The number of crimes the guy has openly admitted to committing while running wild in the Earth Kingdom has earned Zuko more of her respect than any of her goodie-goodie friends got in the first week they knew each other.

Not that Katara, Sokka, and Aang haven’t done a shocking amount of crime since she’s known them. It’s great. But Zuko doesn’t jump through hoops to justify it, and Toph appreciates his bluntness.

“No,” Zuko says, defensive. “I traded it.”

“For what?” Toph wants a juicy story _so bad._ Ever since Katara cut Toph’s performance short, she’s been itching for entertainment. Huh, maybe strike that birthday gift.

“My cooking pot. I don’t have any dishes anymore,” he adds morosely.

“You got a boat in exchange for a tin pot?” Sokka exclaims.

“It’s not a very good boat.”

“Yes,” Katara interrupts before Sokka can make fun of Zuko’s cruddy boat, “we’ll give you a lift.”

“It’s back that way,” he points in the direction he came from last night, toward the far shore.

“I’ll stay here,” Toph says. “You go drop off Sparky, I’ll pack up.”

“We’re already packed,” Sokka says, confused. Toph really, really wants to punch him.

“I have more stuff,” she says pointedly, “over _there._ By the bathroom rock.”

Sokka smacks his own forehead. Zuko shifts uncomfortably.

“Right! Yep, okay, let’s go.” Sokka practically leaps onto Appa.

“Yeah, sounds, uh, sounds good.” Zuko approaches the bison warily. Appa grumbles low in his throat, then lifts his big fuzzy head and licks Zuko from his knees to the top of his head. “Ugh.”

“He likes you!” Katara laughs.

“I told you he wasn’t lying about setting Appa free,” Toph teases. “I think Fuzzy has a new favorite.”

And oh, she can’t _wait_ to hear about that once Aang comes out of hiding.

The three of them lift off. Toph waits for a couple of minutes.

“Hello?” she calls in the general direction of _up._ “Anybody still there?”

“They’re gone, Toph,” Aang says. He leaps over the bathroom rock. “I think that went pretty well! I’m glad Appa likes him.”

“You are?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? That makes it a lot easier. Appa’s friendly, but he gets nervous around fire.”

“I wonder why,” Toph snorts. “How long do you think this will last?”

“How long will what last?”

“You know what I mean.”

Toph has heard tell that sighted people give each other _looks_. They have to, since they apparently don’t pay any attention to tone and most of them can’t sense body language with earthbending. She doesn’t need it, but giving Aang a _look_ right about now would be just the ticket to give her words that extra kick of condescension.

He picks up on it anyway. Toph is a lot of things—most of them awesome—but subtle is not one.

Aang sighs.

“I don’t know. Oh!” He sounds like he’s got an idea. “Maybe if I wear my headband again, we can convince him I’m another earthbender! I could be your cousin.”

“You’ve got no class,” Toph scoffs. “Princy would clock you a mile away.”

“I don’t know, I think I’ve picked up a few things by being around you. I’m a fast learner!”

“Tell that to your earthbending teacher. Oh wait, you just did.”

Aang laughs. Toph smiles, shaking her head.

“It’s weird. Having him here,” Aang sighs after a few seconds. He lets his legs fall out from under himself and lands hard on the ground, which doesn’t push back—for all the guff she gives him, he is learning. “We can’t trust him, I know, but all the stuff he said… I just wish he could say it to my face. I wish he knew that was possible.”

Aang rubs a hand fondly over Toph’s mini Appa sculpture.

“You feel bad for him.”

“I do,” Aang admits like it’s a secret. It probably has to be, given the way Sokka has been acting. “But I’m so _confused,_ and angry, and—confused! You said he didn’t lie, but there are things he—he could have left some things out.”

Aang, like an airbender does, is avoiding something. Toph knows he’ll have to face it eventually or it’ll crush him like a boulder. Maybe Zuko too, she thinks. They’re both too light on their feet when they aren’t paying attention. A habit like that will knock them down sooner or later.

“You know him way better than I do,” Toph says, “but I think you’re expecting too much of him.”

“Too _much?_”

“If he _has_ changed, that stuff takes time. It’s a long process to stop believing what you were raised to think of yourself.” Toph briefly wonders what Sokka did with her champion belt. “And look at his messed-up family. His sister _killed_ you. I’m just saying, he could have turned out a lot worse.”

“Hmph.” Aang pulls his knees up and props his chin on them.

“Look at it this way.” Toph tries for an appeal to Aang’s optimism. “He’s already set a new record for longest time spent around you guys without attacking, right? That’s progress.”

“Not quite,” Aang mumbles into his knees. “A couple more hours, maybe.”

“What? _When?”_

“Hey, look! Katara and Sokka are back!” Aang lifts back to his feet and then, with another miniature whirlwind, takes off who knows how far into the air to probably land right in the saddle while Toph is stuck waiting for their ride.

Cutting and running. _Airbender._

Toph crosses her arms. With a few swift kicks, the little statues of Appa and Katara and the half-dozen other nameless shapes she bent out of boredom crumble to dust. There will be no trace of them here once her feet leave the ground, besides buried food remnants and the area behind the bathroom rock.

It might be nice to have someone around who can burn the rest as easily as she buries it.

Appa hits the ground. Toph climbs aboard, hooks an arm tight around the side of the saddle, and doesn’t talk to Aang for the rest of the morning. To be fair, he doesn’t talk to her either, and he’s got _nothing_ on Toph Beifong when it comes to being a stubborn jerk.

When they eat lunch in the air, Aang guides Toph’s hand to the basket of lychee fruit without a word. She punches him in the arm and takes the last piece.

“So what’s on the schedule for earthbending practice tonight, Sifu Toph?” Aang asks.

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to know.” Toph grins. “Hope you brought a helmet.”

Zuko pushes his one-seat dinghy over choppy waves. The moving spot of white in the blue sky disappears into a patch of clouds.

They could go anywhere now. Untethered from the earth, with Zuko slow and lonesome behind them, they could leave him to his damp feet and aching shoulders in a nation that would see him imprisoned or worse.

There will be no way to know until he gets to their meetup point. Zuko shakes his head. He turns his eyes from the sky to the task at hand. The movement of the water threatens to put him to sleep after his night of watching. The rough wood of the oar threatens splinters.

The hawk flaps uneven wings. It perches on the prow of the boat, proud and keen-eyed. If Zuko loses focus, he will not be the only one lost at sea. The knowledge keeps him from nodding off.

He does what he has done for the past three years: chases a promise made and kept only to himself. No room to doubt. No time to consider failure.

The crown of the island comes into view.

“This isn’t half bad,” Sokka says through a mouthful of river eel-bass.

“Yeah,” Aang agrees. “Katara did a great job with dinner.”

“Oh, I meant this sweet cave. Look at this place! Lava flow on one side of the island, huge, impassable cliffs on the other, great view of the shore so no one can sneak up on us… it’s perfect!” He sighs happily. “I knew tricking a firebender into following us around would be a great idea.”

“No you didn’t,” Toph objects. “You told me I should cover him in rocks and drop him in the ocean.”

“I was joking!”

“I can tell you’re lying.”

“It was _sort of_ a joke,” Sokka amends. “I thought it would be funny, anyway.”

“It wasn’t,” Aang mutters.

“Yeesh, okay. It wasn’t very nice of me. Happy now?”

“Yep!” Aang takes an enormous slurp of his soup.

“Hey, speaking of my sister,” Sokka looks around, “where’d she run off to?”

Aang and Toph eat in dead silence.

“Guys?” he asks again, voice rising half an octave. “Where’s Katara?”

“You snuck off to _feed Zuko?”_ Sokka’s jaw dangles open far enough he’s bound to catch bugs in it soon. It would serve him right.

Katara crosses her arms. She refuses to be judged by the guy who keeps suggesting various ways to not-so-accidentally get their new hanger-on killed.

“He _said_ he lost his dishes,” Katara sniffs. “I’m not going to let him starve. And I didn’t sneak off! Toph and Aang knew where I was going.”

“Leave me out of this,” Toph says, the traitor.

“Sokka,” Aang says slowly. “It’s not a big deal.”

“You weren’t there the time Katara kept feeding a tiger-seal pup when we were kids,” Sokka argues. “Remember that? It followed us home—”

“Zuko’s not a baby tiger-seal!”

“Could have fooled me,” Toph jokes quietly.

“Not helping,” Katara says. “He’s already following us—”

“You fed that baby tiger-seal,” Sokka continues, “and do you remember what happened the next morning?”

Katara clenches her teeth. “It’s not the same—”

“Its mother showed up.” Sokka has that look in his eyes like early spring ice, hard and serious to cover potential panic. “If dad hadn’t been home, it would have eaten Gran-Gran. Do you want the Fire Lord to eat Gran-Gran? _Do you?”_

“Sokka.”

“Okay, I lost that metaphor. But my point still stands!”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Katara snaps. She grabs his empty bowl out of his hands, then Toph’s, then Aang’s. She turns back to the mouth of the cave. “I’m going to go wash up, since you’re too busy being paranoid to help with chores.”

“I wasn’t actually done with—” Aang says meekly. “Never mind.”

“Fine!” Sokka is totally throwing his hands in the air, she just knows it, but she won’t give him the satisfaction of looking. “Maybe _Zuko_ will help you do dishes!”

“Maybe he will!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Katara reaches the small creek between their cave and Zuko’s campfire, which casts a dim orange light around the edge of a small outcropping. She sprays a stream of water into the dirty bowls a bit harder than she needs to. One of them slips out of the small whirlpool she’s made and begins floating downstream.

“Ugh,” Katara grunts in frustration. With a sweep of her arm, a ribbon of ice forms on the surface of the water. It catches the bowl, but overzealously; the wood cracks with sudden freezing. “Ugh!”

“Everything alright?”

“Ah!” Katara whirls around, bringing the trail of water with her. She hits the looming figure smack in the face and sends him sprawling.

“Ow,” Zuko says. He looks up at her, dripping crankily.

“Oh! You startled me.” She bends the water out of his hair and clothes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. That’s not the hardest you’ve hit me,” he grouses as he gets to his feet. “What are you doing?”

“Dishes,” Katara says shortly. Now that her panic is gone, the seething irritation is back—it’s not _entirely_ Zuko’s fault, but he is an unwanted reminder. “Are you done with your bowl?”

“I’ll go get it.” Zuko turns stiffly. He lopes over the uneven remains of a years-old lava flow and back to his lonely campfire, moving, as always, too silently for Katara’s comfort.

She sighs. They’re due for a supply stop soon, anyway. Maybe Zuko can get his own dishes again.

Or they can stock up enough for another mouth to feed. She’s sure they could make that work, as long as Sokka doesn’t insist on carrying the money.

They can make this work.

* * *

This is _not_ going to work.

“I’m coming into town with you.” Zuko slings the sheath of his swords over his shoulder.

“You’re not,” Sokka says.

“It could be dangerous.”

“We’re going shopping!”

“In a Fire Nation town! What if someone recognizes you?”

“What if someone recognizes _you?”_ Sokka shoots back. “You’re pretty easy to—” His mouth snaps shut, eyes wide. “Uh, no offense.”

Zuko isn’t going to light Sokka’s bedroll on fire. He’s _not._ That doesn’t make the idea of doing it any less satisfying.

“Nobody in this country has seen me in three years.”

“But—”

“I had my whole face back then,” he adds. Dancing around the subject is exhausting. Do these people think he doesn’t _know_ what he looks like?

The earthbender might not know at all, actually. The thought of talking to someone without being looked at is freeing—although Zuko should probably make sure he knows her name first.

“Okay.” Sokka rubs the back of his own neck, whether in embarrassment or nervousness Zuko isn’t sure. “But we’re splitting up. To cover more ground. Toph! You’re coming with me and Zuko.”

“Great,” she—_Toph_, Zuko thinks, _remember that_—says with a sarcastic cheeriness that nearly scorches Zuko’s lone remaining eyebrow off. “There’s nothing I love more than standing around while you look at stuff and decide not to buy it.”

“We are on a _serious trip_ to restock our provisions,” Sokka says defensively.

“Yeah, we are, which is why your sister is carrying the money.”

“I—” Sokka opens his mouth, thinks for a second, and then closes it again. “Point.”

Zuko holds his breath and waits for the fallout. Their bickering reminds him of two things, both hard to think about for different reasons—sharp comments that cut like the knife Azula insisted he wasn’t even good with, aimed true enough to defang any reply he could have made; Zuko’s pointed complaints about laziness or snoring as careless as flying sparks off the fire of his own unhappiness, met with Uncle’s ability to wave them away on a gentle breeze. He knows how to butt heads. It’s a habit that has defined most of his life.

He doesn’t know how to process a concession of defeat. A friendly one, no less; Sokka tosses Toph her sole-less shoes without a word, and she hands him his sword. No sulking at all from either of them. Nobody hurt or hurting.

Sokka ducks away to get a portion of the money from Katara. Zuko is alone with Toph then, who appears to be picking startlingly large pebbles from between her toes. He checks his swords for want of something to do, unable to think of a word to say and not sure how angry she would be about having her task interrupted.

Sokka returns from the cave, which Zuko can’t see beyond the bulk of the bison, jingling a small bag of coins as if taunting his friend. Zuko must blink and miss whatever earthbending move she does, because the bag goes flying out of Sokka’s hand and lands in Toph’s, punctuated by a smirk from her and a useless glare from him.

“I take back everything I’ve ever said about how cool it is you learned how to do that.”

“We have an ancient and respected custom in the Earth Kingdom.” Toph grins. “It’s called _no take-backsies.”_

The market smells amazing. Sizzling fire flakes here; roasting chicken-cow there; woodsmoke and the clean ozone of bent flame. Zuko has been through a half-dozen Fire Nation towns since he left Ba Sing Se, and more colonies since his banishment, but there was never time—he never _gave himself_ time to stop and appreciate them.

It only would have made him angry, then, these reminders of home he passed through like a ghost: never able to touch, never able to stay. It makes him feel something like anger now, but a little off-center.

Whatever it is, it hurts more than anger. Not for the first time, he misses the comfort of rage.

“Katara’s on fresh ingredients.” Sokka squints at the list in his hand. “Fruits and vegetables and stuff. Which leaves us with meat duty! Plus rice.”

“Maybe noodles, if we’re feeling spicy,” Toph says.

“The food in this place is already spicy enough,” Sokka grumbles. He elbows Zuko, harder than necessary but not hard enough to hurt, which is progress. Probably. “How’d you stand it growing up? Must be hard to learn evil oaths praising the Fire Lord wid your dongue alwayd burn’d.” He says the last few words with his own tongue hanging halfway out of his mouth.

“Put that away,” Zuko snaps. “You look like a pangolin-bear.”

Toph laughs. Zuko nearly jumps out of his skin at the realization that he made her do that.

He preens a little. He hasn’t made anyone but Uncle laugh in years, when they weren’t laughing _at_ him. Azula was never funny; she just made people too scared not to laugh at her jokes, which weren’t even good, just mean.

It occurs to Zuko that he was being a bit mean to Sokka. This leaves his mood well and truly dampened.

A flicker in the corner of his eye makes Zuko twitch and start to reach for his swords before he knows he’s done it. There, at least, is something else to focus on besides his lack of comedic potential: the actual reason he’s here at all.

“What?” Sokka asks.

“I think we’re being followed,” Zuko hisses. “Don’t look. I said don’t look!”

“I don’t see anyone. Toph?”

“This market is full of people,” Toph shrugs. “Half of them are going the same way we are.”

Again—a flash of black between two storefronts. Implacably, unsettlingly familiar. Zuko shifts his stance and steps smoothly between Sokka and Toph to walk in front.

“Just stay close to me. And keep moving.”

“Whatever you say, Mister Bodyguard.” Out of the corner of his eye, Zuko sees Toph give a sarcastic salute.

They pick up a sack of rice that Sokka insists he carry, despite the fact that it will seriously hamper the time it takes him to draw his swords. Toph haggles a fishmonger down to a pittance with a patient ferocity Zuko wishes he’d had at her age, given the fact that he had to do the same not infrequently to get a halfway decent meal on his ship. Sokka takes almost fifteen minutes to decide between a cut of rabbiroo leg or egg noodles, and only finally chooses the noodles—with a bout of bellyaching worthy of a toddler—when Zuko yells at him to hurry up.

He stays on edge the entire time. The figure in black hasn’t made another appearance, which only worries Zuko more. Someone knows how to hide—knows how to hide from _him._

“There, we’re done,” Sokka says, laden down with purchases just outside the teeming market. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? I told you, we weren’t in any danger. You worry too—Ack!”

“Get down!” Zuko shouts. Maybe unnecessarily, considering he did just shove Sokka over. He’s fine, though; he fell on top of the sack of rice, which Zuko dropped the instant he saw movement on the high wooden wall separating the village from the slope of the volcano.

Not a moment too soon, his swords are in his hands, reverberating with the cacophonous sound of steel hitting steel. Three bo-shuriken bounce off the flats of his blades. He looks up, swipes away another blade spinning through the air toward his head, and takes in the sight of the woman who spent her afternoon stalking them through a market.

She’s tall, dressed in loose black robes, with sleek inky hair without a strand out of place. Her face is blank and pale and perfect: high cheekbones, proud eyes, hands as quick as a rat-viper—hands that are currently throwing another four-pointed star _directly at Zuko_.

He spins his dao—plum blossom, tight against his body. Her shuriken falls again.

“What? Since when can you—” Sokka starts.

Zuko knocks another shuriken out of the air, inches from Sokka’s head, which seems to remind him which dangerous Fire Nation teenager is worth more of his attention right now. He looks to the wall and tenses.

“You.” Sokka pulls himself to his feet and draws his sword.

“Oh.” The woman’s voice is a brass instrument playing over still water, if a tsungi horn could sound irrevocably bored. “You’re here. How exciting.”

“I don’t know who this girl is,” Toph says, “but I’m about to take all those stupid knives and—”

“You can’t—eep!” Sokka ducks a flying blade, then chops another out of the air with his own sword, basket of groceries swinging wildly from the crook of one arm. “You can’t metalbend in front of all these people!”

Zuko’s mind is torn between shouting _You can’t metal-_what_?_ and _What people?_ The latter question answers itself the second he glances away from the woman on the wall. He honestly hadn’t noticed the crowd gathering at the edge of the market to gawk at the fight. Shouting erupts from further up the street, probably local guards—the last thing anyone here wants.

His mind tears itself into a third, bigger piece that simply says: _Knife!_

He blocks a throwing knife.

“Then what do _you_ suggest, Captain Strategy?” Toph sidesteps three shuriken in a row without a flinch.

“Draw her off,” Sokka says. “On my signal—woah, too close, too close!”

“Was that the signal?” Zuko asks.

“Sure! Fine, whatever!”

Sokka runs. Toph runs. Zuko’s own reflection flashes in the blade of one of his swords as it passes in front of his face; when it’s gone, he finds himself meeting the woman’s gaze. Her fringe of silky hair ripples above her eyes as if time has slowed down.

_“Mai?”_

Her face twitches. Zuko runs.

The metal girl chases them along the top of the wall. Short lines of steel hidden up her sleeves, in her robes, sewn into her _socks,_ give Toph a perforated silhouette of their pursuer. She can sense points of metal a dozen feet off the ground, moving at a clip behind them—the gal is packing a serious number of sharp, pointy things. Toph is almost impressed.

It would be easier to feel impressed if she’d stop trying to impale all of them. The second this girl gets down from that wall, Toph is going to _kick_ her _butt._

“We’re almost,” Sokka pants, “around the side of the mountain. Toph, as soon as we make it, do your thing.”

“Can’t wait,” Toph says.

Zuko catches up to them easily. His feet fly over the hard-packed road out of town—sprinter, Toph thinks, not pacing himself for distance. She wonders if he’s ever paced himself for a second of his life.

Doesn’t matter. That girl with all the pointy metal outlining her limbs runs out of wooden wall and hits the dirt. Toph smiles. Give it a minute, and she’s going to hit _back._

Sokka reaches out a hand to grab a hunk of rock and swing himself around the edge of an old formation at the base of the volcano. Toph follows, Zuko behind, and they wait for the probably-an-assassin to come find them.

They don’t have to wait long.

“She’s coming,” Sokka whispers frantically. “Toph, she’s _right there.”_

Toph is _extremely_ aware of that, thank you, Sokka. At least Sparky is letting her do what she needs to do—albeit with a heart rate that makes her half expect Twinkletoes to come out of nowhere and bust out the tsungi horn for accompaniment.

The girl drops two flat stars of steel into her hands. Footstep, footstep, she raises an arm, one more step…

_Now._

Toph bends a bar of earth across the toes of their attacker’s pointy Fire Nation shoes. Betrayed by her own momentum, the girl keels forward to fall flat on her face.

There is a puff of dust and a grunt.

Before she can even think about getting up, Toph clenches her fists. Knives and hairpins and knives being used as hairpins fly through the air. There is the sound of flapping cloth as Toph pulls a really astounding amount of metal off the girl—based on the vibrations, her outer robe has flipped up and over the top of her head.

It was probably the extra-large star tucked into the back of her sash that did it. Toph’s not keeping score.

The weapons crumple into a ball the size of Appa’s foot. Toph lays her hands on it, twisting the metal into a dull, useless web. She’s never worked with this many separate pieces before. Toph wonders if she could make anything cool out of them.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sokka says.

Toph raises one index finger.

“Wait.”

She twitches her head. A single, solitary throwing knife, about three inches long, pops out from the back of the girl’s left shoe. It hits the ball of metal with a quiet _ding._

“Okay,” Toph says. “Now we’re good.”

Sokka points his sword warily at the girl, who swats at the robe tangled in her loose hair and gets to her feet with an impressive amount of dignity, considering.

“If you follow us—” he says warningly.

“Just leave,” the girl interrupts, the unspoken _whatever_ almost louder than her words.

She doesn’t have to tell them twice. Sokka sheaths his sword and heads for the hills. Toph isn’t far behind.

Zuko, though, takes a second to start moving. He stands face-to-face with their of-late attacker, and Toph worries for a wild moment that he’s about to make _sure_ she can’t follow them.

He puts away his swords.

Zuko turns and follows Toph and Sokka, slower than before.

They scramble over ridges of pock-marked volcanic stone. Toph knows they must be well out of her line of sight, but they’re not so far from the girl that she can’t sense her. She’s just… standing there. Still.

She hasn’t moved—but her heartbeat doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. It hammers like a blacksmith with a deadline. It kicks so hard and fast every sighted idiot on the island should be able to feel it.

Toph, Sokka, and Zuko make their way to the other side of the volcano. The girl breathes deep and runs off. Soon, she’s far beyond Toph’s ability to sense her.

* * *

“—And then he pulls out _two swords_ and is all like ‘whoosh!’ ‘Clash!’ ‘Pshow!’ Knocking knives right out of the air!”

“Uh huh,” Katara says with a smirk. “So it’s a _good_ thing Zuko came with you? Is that what you’re saying?”

Sokka lowers his arms, which have up to now been used as stand-in swords for a very vivid reenactment. He squints at his sister.

“It was… useful. Having him around,” Sokka admits begrudgingly. “But I totally could have taken her if he hadn’t knocked me down!”

“You mean when he pushed you out of the way of a bunch of flying daggers?” Toph taunts. “It’s your turn, Twinkletoes.”

“Sorry!” Aang turns back to the stone pai sho board and pulls his blindfold down. “Okay, um.” He reaches for one of his spirit tiles, hoping to trap Toph’s in a ko fight.

“That’s not your piece.” Toph flicks him in the forehead.

“Yes it is! I have two tiles in the northern mountain.”

“You do,” Toph agrees. “That’s not one of them. Stop touching my rock tile.”

“They’re all rock tiles!” Aang runs his fingers over the top of the tile made of stone, expecting the smooth, rhombic lines of the light spirit and finding— “Oh. You meant it’s… the rock.”

“You better improve at this before I make you do it hands-free _and_ blind,” Toph warns. “Sense the shape of the pieces! Missing a single pebble in a fight can mean the difference between winning and going home with a hole in your skull.”

Aang sighs.

“I know. I’m trying.”

He takes a deep breath, plants his feet in the dirt, and listens for the vibrations of his own heartbeat. He follows them outward like a ripple in a pond, intersected by the waves of Toph’s fingers tapping against the stone board, Katara smothering Sokka in a teasing hug as she thanks him for saving half their groceries even in the midst of a life-or-death situation, Momo’s paws clasping together in an attempt to catch a beetle, the beetle’s tiny legs, the rumble of Appa’s breathing, the slow creep of magma deep beneath the island. He follows it back up, into himself—his focus narrows, and details of small raised shapes and thin, cross-hatched cuts in the stone table assemble in front of him.

Aang reaches out to take hold of his spirit tile. He moves it next to Toph’s rock.

“Excellent job, pupil,” Toph says, voice full of earnest praise. “You just lost the game.”

“What?” Aang tears the blindfold off just in time to see Toph move her elephant-horse into position, capturing the western desert. _“Noooo.”_

“Hey, it was your idea to practice like this.” She shrugs. “If I had it my way, I’d be chucking boulders at your head right now.”

“This is supposed to be a game of strategy,” Aang moans. “How do you always win in the most obvious way possible?”

“Maybe you’re just bad at it.”

“Hmph.” Aang crosses his arms. He used to beat Gyatso at pai sho plenty—or would have, if the greatest airbender in the world hadn’t cheated every time.

“I guess that’s enough training for today. You’re getting better,” Toph adds. This is said as if she is both more proud than she’s ever been and, at the same time, has been forced to compliment Aang at knifepoint. He wonders how she pulls it off.

“Thanks, Toph,” he says, because at the end of the day he understands what she means.

Toph smiles. With a stomp of her foot, the pai sho board resets itself. Aang gets up to gather an armful of the hay he bought with Katara today and give Appa his dinner.

“Katara,” Toph calls. “Are you on your way to deliver royal room service?”

“Please stop calling it that,” Katara sighs. “But yes, I’m bringing Zuko some food. Why?”

“Can I come?”

“Uh,” Katara says, startled, “sure.”

“Great!” Toph hops up and follows her down the slope of the long-cooled lava flow toward Zuko’s camp.

“Bye, guys,” Aang mutters. “Have fun without me.”

“Aw,” Sokka laughs, “is someone jealous he’s not Katara’s baby tiger-seal anymore?”

_“No.”_ Aang throws his hay down a bit harder than he needs to. Appa rumbles reprovingly.

“It’s okay to feel that way, buddy. Katara likes taking care of people, and she’s good at it most of the time. It makes sense that you’d want her to.” Sokka runs a whetstone over his sword, then holds it up to check the edge of the blade. “Hey, can you teach me how to play pai sho?”

“What?” Aang shakes his head at the non-sequitur. “How come?”

“Ever since Master Piandao gave me that lotus tile, I’ve been thinking about it. It has to mean something, you know? But I don’t know how to play. You taught Toph, so,” he gestures at the board. “Want to show me?”

A slow grin spreads over Aang’s face. He schools it back to calm neutrality when Sokka glances up at him.

“Sokka,” Aang says solemnly, “it would be my pleasure to show you everything I learned from the monks about playing pai sho.”

“Zuko,” Toph says, “do you know how to play pai sho?”

Zuko swallows a mouthful of noodles.

“Well,” he hems and haws, “sort of. My uncle used to make me play.”

“Can you teach me?”

He chokes on the next bunch of noodles he’s just started shoveling into his mouth. Halfway up the ridge, Katara pauses. Toph is certain she’s too far away to make out what they’re saying, but she might be worried Toph is strangling their firebending guest.

“We don’t have a board…” Zuko points out, genius that he is.

At the sound of his voice, which proves he’s still breathing, Katara keeps walking back to camp. She’s weird around poor Sparky; for all she defends him to Sokka, she doesn’t seem to like actually spending time with the guy.

“Not a problem.” Toph has more than enough practice at this by now to pop a fully-formed set out of the ground, but she doesn’t want to tip her hand too soon. She raises a short, wide column of earth for the table.

“Um,” Zuko says.

“There are lines around the board, right? Here.” Toph holds out one hand. “Show me.”

“I—” He doesn’t move and his face is pointed at Toph’s extended hand, which probably means he’s staring at it like she threw a dead fish at him.

Toph gets it. It took her awhile to get used to being touched after she joined up, too. As it turns out, it’s kind of nice to have people you trust express that trust through casual physical contact—who knew?

Aang told her once that the first step towards training a pet is proper socialization. She figures the same can be applied to stray Fire Princes.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Toph waves her other hand in front of her eyes, “I can’t see what you’re doing. So chop-chop, Sokka said we’re leaving at dawn in case your evil sister and her circus friend are right behind the girl with the knives. I don’t have all night.”

At the mere mention of the dangerous ladies, Zuko’s heartbeat ratchets upward. Toph decides to keep that in mind. Seems like it might be important later.

“Azula probably hasn’t left the palace,” he says, sounding like he’s trying to reassure himself more than Toph. “Why do you want this?”

There it is again: the suspicion. Princy is so paranoid—though given what little she knows about his family and his home life, he has reason enough to be.

Toph almost feels bad about what she’s about to say, but you can’t argue with results. She injects a waver into her voice that she hasn’t had to use since she left Gaoling.

“When we were in Ba Sing Se,” she says, “Aang promised to teach me. But he never got the chance, and then…”

Zuko’s breathing goes all funny for a second. His hand is warm when he takes hers, gingerly as if afraid her skin will burn him, and guides it to the table.

“The four main lines of the board go like this, parallel and perpendicular. The smaller lines cross at the intersections,” he explains. Her fingers trail imaginary lines that become literal grooves as she passes over them. “There are two areas called the mountains, here and here, and two called the deserts, over here and over there. At the beginning of the game, players agree which side is north and which is south. Or maybe they start with east and west? No, wait, it’s definitely north and south. And in each of the corners there’s, uh. Okay, I don’t remember what the corners are called, but—”

It’s lucky Toph already knows how to play this game, because she’s starting to suspect Zuko doesn’t.

“—then you start with seven—No, fourteen pieces on each side, and you _can_ put in more from your pot but you usually want to save those for later. At least, that’s what Uncle told me, except then I would forget I had them. All the tiles move differently—”

“—like the wheel,” Aang says, holding up the tile in question. “You can put it anywhere you want to start, but it can only enter a desert, not leave it, and can only leave a mountain, not enter it.”

“Do all the pieces have this many rules?” Sokka asks, staring down at the board with intense concentration, chin in his hand.

“No, don’t worry, a lot of them are simpler. The spirit tiles are my favorite. You have two of them on each side: a light and a dark. They can move along any line, so there’s a lot of freedom in what you can do with them—”

“—but once a spirit tile leaves the board, it’s over. It doesn’t count toward your captured pieces at the end, and it can never rejoin the game.”

“So your only prize is getting it out of the way.” Toph nods. “High risk, no reward.”

“Exactly.” He looks over the raised tile Toph bent. She followed his description to a tee, including—and emphasizing—the mistakes. “Good job.”

“What are you guys up to?” Katara asks.

“Aang’s teaching me pai sho.”

“Come join us!” Aang invites her. “I was just explaining the ko rule. There are situations where a move will put the board back exactly the way it was earlier in the game. You’re not allowed to do that, because then you can get stuck in an endless cycle of doing the same thing over and over—”

“—Uncle always got frustrated with me because of this stupid rule,” Zuko explains. “He said pai sho was like life—”

“—the only way to succeed is to accept the state of constant change,” Aang recites. “Monk Gyatso used to say that’s why the wisest monks played pai sho every day. Then he would say, _but mostly because it’s fun!”_

“Master Pakku said the same thing about change when we were learning waterbending, remember?”

“Oh, yeah!” Aang laughs. “Old people sure love board games, huh?”

“Wow,” Toph says. “Old people really love board games.”

“No kidding.”

“What about the white lotus tile?” Sokka asks. “You didn’t explain that one.”

“Oh, right.” Aang shrugs. “Most people don’t use it. It has the most limited movement of any piece. You can only ever place it on the border between one area and another. Plus, it can’t actually capture other tiles. You _can_ use it defensively, but that’s a complicated strategy and Gyatso never taught me how to do it. He told me he would soon, and then…”

Katara lays a hand on his shoulder.

“So,” Aang says, forcing himself to brightness again, “ready to play, Sokka?”

“It’s Uncle’s favorite,” Zuko says. He doesn’t elaborate. “Ready to try it?”

“You’re on.”

“You were gone awhile,” Katara says when Toph finally decides to grace them with her presence.

“Yeah,” Toph laughs. She cracks her knuckles. “I was hustling Zuko at pai sho.”

Katara disguises her laugh as a scoff—she doesn’t need to encourage this kind of behavior, but the image of Zuko getting as worked up as Aang does when Toph wins at the game is too funny.

“Did you at least bring his bowl back?”

“Nope.” Toph flops onto the ground and kicks her feet up on Appa’s tail.

“Well in that case, Sokka will have to go get it. It’s _your_ turn to do the dishes,” she says loudly and pointedly toward her brother.

“Shh! Shush!” He waves her off. His eyes are glued to the table. “I’m so close to winning.”

“C’mon, Sokka,” Aang says. “You said we have to leave right away at dawn. Aren’t chores more important than _playing?”_

Sokka looks up at Aang. The blatant suspicion on his face reflects how Katara feels. Aang, putting chores above games? Maybe he really is growing up.

“Fine,” Sokka agrees. “Katara, make sure he doesn’t touch my tiles while I’m gone.”

“Of course, Pai Sho Master Sokka.” She bows her head in sarcastic deference. Aang laughs and Toph lets out a snort.

Sokka’s grumbling is audible all the way down the hill.

“Hey, Fire Jerk!” his voice carries across the uninhabited stretch of the island. “If you’re going to mooch off of us, at least give your dishes back!”

Katara rolls her eyes. As her gaze lands near the pai sho table, she sees Aang subtly make a fist and roll it forward. There is a quiet scrape of stone, as if two pai sho tiles have mysteriously switched places.

“Nice move,” Toph mutters.

Sokka reappears over the ridge, holding a bowl and angrily rubbing his temple.

“He threw it at me,” Sokka whines.

“You did open the conversation by calling him a jerk,” Toph points out.

“Whatever.” Sokka drops the bowl on the pile of dirty dishes and sits back down at the table. “Let’s just finish this—Hey! Did you move my wheel tile?”

“I didn’t touch the pieces while you were gone,” Aang vows. Sokka frowns.

“Katara?”

“It’s true,” Katara attests. She glances at Aang from the corner of her eye. “He didn’t touch a single tile.”

Toph digs her toes into Katara’s lower back, which is super gross and a clear sign of approval. Katara smiles, relaxing against Appa’s leg to the sweet sound of Sokka losing and Toph laughing and Momo chattering in the windless night.

This isn’t all of her family—dad is still steering a steel ship through enemy waters, Gran-Gran is probably telling stories by firelight to the children Sokka once tried to turn into warriors, the friends they’ve made are scattered across the world but gathering for the dangerous task ahead of them all—but it is the bulk of it. This is where her heart lives now: around a campfire in a strange corner of the world, always a little lost but never one bit alone.

Speaking of loneliness, she wonders about Zuko.

He isn’t so lucky to have part of his family here. Katara wants to reach out; she thinks they could understand each other better than either ever expected. But first, she has to sort out the feelings that bubble up every time she looks at him: pity, which he probably wouldn’t want; and anger, which everyone expects; and worry—for what, Katara doesn’t know.

That’s a question for later. They have an early morning tomorrow. First, she’ll get some sleep. Then, she’ll wonder where their enemy-turned-bodyguard fits into the family they’ve built.

Either that, or he’ll try to kill them all again. At least she knows she can beat him now.

She sleeps deeply and rises with the sun.

* * *

“Azula, look!” Ty Lee waves goodbye to the hawk as it flies away. “A letter from Mai!”

“What did she say?”

Ty Lee clears her throat.

“_Everything is still boring,_” she reads with a giggle. “She’s so funny. _P.S. I need money for new weapons. I have an upgrade in mind._ Ooh, what do you think that means?”

“I don’t know,” Azula says. “But I look forward to finding out.”

* * *

A stream of water pours from Zuko’s shoe into the ocean. He shakes it once, then sets it aside next to its twin.

“I’m not hungry, Katara,” he snaps to the footsteps approaching behind him.

“Good,” comes Sokka’s voice. “I’m a terrible cook.”

Zuko jumps to his feet—bare feet. A moment too late, he remembers he was going to let them dry. Now sand and twigs and who knows what else will be stuck between his toes all night. He scowls even harder than he has already been scowling, the result of years of dedicated practice.

“What do you want?”

“You know what? If you’re going to be like _that_, I’ll just leave_—_”

“No, wait.” Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. He breathes in, out, remembers something Uncle said once about humility, and says, “Sorry. For snapping. What’s on your mind?”

“I realized I never… said thank you,” Sokka grits out as if the act is physically painful. “For the other day, at the market. Toph and I have been in some sticky situations before, but you really saved our butts back there. So. Thanks, I guess.”

Sokka’s wide, blue eyes are half-lidded in a squint. He twists his mouth in an uncomfortable cousin of a smile.

“Did your sister make you do this?”

Sokka lets out a huge breath. His shoulders relax, then waver slightly with his answering chuckle.

“Yep, she absolutely did. But she was right, I do owe you a thank you. And maybe an apology?” Sokka raises his eyebrows. His non-smile is closer to a sibling than a cousin now.

“For what?”

“For how I’ve been treating you. Calling you jerk all the time, that kind of stuff.”

Zuko nods. Sokka stares at him.

“What?”

“This is the part where you accept my apology and do one back,” he says, like Zuko is an actor who has missed his cue.

“I accept your apology,” Zuko replies. “What do you want one from _me_ for?”

“Uh, for all those times you firebent at me? Or the time you burned down Kyoshi Island? Or had us attacked by pirates, or stole Katara’s necklace—”

“I didn’t actually steal—”

“—or how about for _throwing a bowl at my head?”_

Zuko takes his turn to stare.

“I’m sorry I threw a bowl at your head,” he says at last.

Sokka nods once.

“Apology accepted.” Sokka looks at him curiously for a moment. “By the way, since when do you use swords?”

“Huh?” The things that come out of Sokka’s mouth should not catch him off-guard nearly as often as they do.

“At the market,” Sokka explains. “I didn’t know you could do that, is all. I’m surprised you fight with anything except firebending. Especially that you’re actually, you know, good. With the swords.”

Zuko snorts. The sound is involuntary, but a better alternative than whatever reflexive expression of gratitude a weak part of him wants to make at the minor praise.

“I’ve trained with broadswords since I was a kid. Firebending is more… portable.”

This is practically a lie by omission. There are a thousand other things Zuko could say about his swords, his fire, and why one he did on the deck of his ship while the other he hid in his room. These things have to do with control, with power, with who he was supposed to be, and who he was when nobody could see his face or what was and will be marked on it for the rest of his life.

Firebending is more portable. He leaves it at that.

“Makes sense,” Sokka shrugs. “Can you show me?”

“You just made me apologize for all the firebending I’ve done around you, and now you want me to do _more?”_

“Okay, one,” Sokka holds up his index finger, “you only apologized for throwing a bowl at my head, none of the other stuff. Two,” he raises his second finger, “I meant the swords.”

“Oh.” Zuko thinks about it. “Not until I have my shoes back on.”

“Fair. Why aren’t you wearing your—Ah.”

Zuko follows Sokka’s gaze. He expected the sound of understanding to be because the shoes are soaked through, but instead it seems to be that one is currently occupied.

The hawk chirps happily from its cozy seat in Zuko’s right shoe.

“Get out of there!” He tries to shoo the hawk. “How did you even fit in that?”

It only hunkers down deeper.

“Why’d you take your shoes off in the first place?” Sokka asks when Zuko gives up on getting the hawk out of its new favorite place to sleep.

“They were wet.”

“Great answer.” Sokka crosses his arms. “Why were they wet?”

“I have a leak in my boat. It wasn’t so bad at first, but it’s getting worse.”

“Let me guess.” Sokka grins. “A royal education doesn’t include how to fix a leaky canoe?”

Zuko glares at him.

“No.”

“Then today’s your lucky day! The son of the Fire Lord may have been deprived of the chance to learn vital life skills, but the son of the Southern Chief,” he jabs a thumb to his own chest, “has fixed more boats than you can count.”

“You’re… going to fix my boat?”

“I’ll make a deal with you, Zuko. I fix your boat, and you give me a little _whap-whap,_” he chops his hands through the air, “demonstration.”

“Okay. But why?”

“Because I don’t get the chance to watch someone who knows their way around a blade and isn’t trying to kill me very often,” he says. “I use just the one sword, so I’m not asking for a lesson, but I’d like to see how yours work.”

“Alright. But we fix my boat first. And you help me get the hawk out of my shoe.”

Sokka rubs his chin, pondering the terms of the agreement.

“Deal.” He holds out a hand.

“What,” Zuko says flatly, “do you want me to do with that?”

“You…” He deflates. “You grab my forearm, like this.”

He wraps his hand around Zuko’s arm just below the elbow. There are two choices open to Zuko: hold Sokka’s arm in return, or let his hand dangle there like a dead pentapus.

He returns the gesture. Sokka is more muscular than he looks, lean and wiry in the arms.

“Is this a Water Tribe thing?”

“Yep.”

“How long does it last?”

“You, uh.” Sokka coughs. “You can let go now.”

Zuko lets go. Sokka drops his arm.

“So. Boat?”

“Yes! Right, boat. Good. Let’s go.”

They don’t have any pitch, but Appa’s saddle wax makes a decent stand-in when melted.

Zuko, unsurprisingly, is absolutely hopeless at anything resembling hands-on labor. After he almost bores another hole in the boat trying to strip the nearly-nonexistent paint, Sokka banishes him—poor choice of words there, Sokka, yeesh, good thing this is in his head and not out loud—to the campfire, where he coaxes Hawky out of his shoe with a tiny strip of dried chicken-cow meat.

It’s weirdly comfortable, the act of silently doing something with his hands while Zuko sits right there. He doesn’t try to make conversation. He doesn’t comment on what Sokka is doing.

He could definitely benefit from asking some questions about the process, but maybe caulking a boat is precious information Sokka must keep out of Fire Nation hands. The thought makes him smile.

When he’s done, Zuko slips on his shoes, pulls out his swords, and does a series of spins that make Sokka wonder at the fact that he hasn’t decapitated himself by now.

The forms are complicated and graceful. There’s a logic to them, too. A pattern. It writes itself in the air around Zuko and assembles in Sokka’s mind. He’s always been a quick study with shapes, with movement.

“Thanks,” Sokka says when Zuko finishes his set.

“Yeah,” Zuko replies. “Sorry for—You know. All the rest of it. Not just throwing a bowl at your head.”

Sokka smiles.

“Sorry for how many times I hit _you_ in the head. Guess we’re even now.”

“I guess so.”

* * *

“I was the _first_ person to ask if he wanted to be friends,” Aang grumbles. “Now he thinks I’m dead and he’s hanging out with everybody else!”

Momo chatters. He pats the side of Aang’s face with one soft paw.

“You’re right, Momo,” he sighs. “Something’s gotta give eventually.”

* * *

Katara takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Toph asks. “We just got here.” She picks something unidentifiable out from between her big and second toes, then flicks it towards Sokka. It misses his head by an inch.

“We’re going to have a talk with Zuko.”

Aang’s head pops out from behind Appa. “Did he do something?”

“No,” says Katara. “And I don’t think he’s going to. I think we can trust him.”

“Katara,” Sokka gets to his feet, leveling a measured look at his sister. “You’re not thinking of telling him about Aang, are you?”

“Why not?” Katara plants her hands on her hips and looks around. “Do you honestly think we can keep this up until we meet up with dad? What are we going to do then, tie him up and blindfold him while Aang goes off to fight the Fire Lord? We have to tell him something sooner or later.”

“Maybe we have to tell him _something,_” Sokka agrees, “but let’s not be hasty, okay?”

“Fine. But what we’re doing now isn’t going to work forever, you know that. And I think Zuko should be part of the conversation when we decide what our next steps are going to be.”

“She has a point,” Aang says. He flips over the top of Appa’s head on a short breeze and stands beside Katara.

“Hey, Aang, you should be part of the conversation too,” Sokka pushes back. The tension leaves him a second later. “But you’re not wrong. What we’re doing now was never going to be permanent. Honestly, I didn’t expect him to stick around this long without betraying us. ”

“I told you he was being sincere,” Toph chimes in.

“Then it’s settled,” Katara smiles. She turns to the Avatar. “Sorry, Aang. I wish you could come.”

“It’s okay,” Aang nods. “But Sokka’s right too. Don’t tell him about me yet, okay? I want to do it in person, and I have a feeling it’s not the right time.”

“A weird spirity Avatar feeling?” Sokka asks. “Are your past lives popping up in your dreams to say ‘_Do-o-o-n’t trust Zu-u-ukoooo’_?” He draws the vowels out in a wavering, spooky voice.

“No,” Aang laughs. “And if they were, it would sound more like, _Aang!”_ He pitches his voice down so low it threatens to crack, _“I come with a warning. One on this island will betray you. Beware! Oooooh_.” He adds his own spooky noise at the end, which cracks Sokka up.

“Your past lives sound like a real drag,” Toph says.

“Not all the time! Roku is nice. He’s been really helpful.”

“Kyoshi did almost get you executed, remember?” Sokka points out. “Because she killed that guy a couple hundred years ago?”

“I take it back,” Toph says. _“That_ past life sounds awesome.”

“Alright.” Katara grabs Sokka by the hand, then Toph. She pulls them away from camp and toward the stretch of woods where Zuko’s fire flickers dimly in the distance. “We’re going now. We don’t have to tell him anything, but it’ll be good to clear the air. Get some things straightened out.”

“I’ll be here,” Aang calls after them. More quietly, he adds, “Alone. For however long you’re gone.”

He drops to the ground and folds his arms on top of his knees. Momo scampers up his shoulder, curls his tail around Aang’s neck, and starts picking through his hair.

“Thanks, buddy,” Aang says. “I can always count on you.”

“You, um,” Zuko glances between the faces of the three kids across from him, “want me to travel with you?”

“We want you to make camp with us,” Katara clarifies. “If that’s alright with you.”

“It’ll be more efficient,” Sokka says.

“And I can spend more time kicking your butt at pai sho,” Toph adds.

“What’s changed?”

Sokka and Katara look at each other. It’s a look that holds an entire conversation within a few quirks and twitches, a look between two people who have been a team for a long time—who have had no choice.

When Zuko imagines sharing that kind of clarity and trust with his own sister, his mind goes blank. The image of Uncle replaces Azula; understanding clicks into place.

He won’t have that again anytime soon. Uncle is in Ba Sing Se, half a world away, and this invitation from the Avatar’s friends is the same as every other act of generosity from them: conditional. Keeping Zuko on a tight leash.

“We realized we couldn’t go on like this forever,” Sokka says at last. “It’s not fair.”

“Yeah, it’s not.”

Zuko can imagine how inconvenient he is to them, how _unfair._ It’s not fair to them they have a master swordsman and firebender with an extensive knowledge of Fire Nation geography and politics at their beck and call. It’s not fair their new bodyguard who wants nothing but to end the war hasn’t poked or prodded once about this mysterious plan their father hinted at. It’s not _fair_ he’s done everything they’ve asked of him, saved their lives, nearly died a half-dozen times to do it, and still feels a bright little yearning inside at the idea that he’s being granted the privilege of sharing their campfire. It’s not fair that he’s done next to nothing since he found them.

For the first time in months, the tight lid over the ashes of his rage slips. The fire comes roaring to life.

“Although,” Sokka says, “there is already a lemur in the group, so Hawky will need to be on his best behavior.”

“His name’s not _Hawky!_” Zuko shouts, leaping to his feet. Two sets of blue eyes look up at him in shock.

“There’s no reason to get so angry,” Katara scolds. “We’re just trying to—”

“No reason?” Zuko laughs, rough and cruel. “Look at me. Look around! I have every reason to be angry. I thought I wasn’t anymore, but it’s still there! It’s always there.”

“Calm down,” Sokka yelps. “I’ll call the hawk whatever you want me to call it, yeesh.”

“Being part of the group,” Katara says, “means figuring out how to work together.”

“That’s the problem,” Zuko exclaims. “You won’t _let_ me be part of your group! I almost got myself killed protecting you, and I light your campfire when you lose your spark rocks—”

“That was one time,” Sokka mutters.

Zuko grits his teeth. He tastes smoke, sees it curling up past his nose.

“You keep acting like I have to earn my keep, but you won’t even let me ride on your bison! And, and my boat almost _sank_ today because of your shoddy repairs, Sokka!”

It’s getting hard to catch his breath. Zuko heaves in air and waits for the fight he’s certainly started.

A fight doesn’t come. Katara looks at him with pity, which is infinitely worse.

“So it’s us you’re angry at,” she says.

“Yes—no. I don’t know!”

The fire rises, falls, rises again to the pace of Zuko’s lungs.

“If it’s not us,” Toph says, “then who?”

“The Fire Nation?” Sokka suggests. “It must be hard being here again.”

“Sure, fine. I’m angry at the Fire Nation. I’m angry that I was banished for three years and it hasn’t changed at all. It didn’t _matter_.”

He paces, the pressure of his feet in the sand a reminder that he’s still here. The reasons for his anger build between his teeth—they come out stinging and speckled with blood.

“I’m angry at my father for banishing me and for everything about this stupid war. My sister—” Another bitter laugh breaks from Zuko’s throat. “I’m furious with Azula for _everything_. For the way she always treated me. For taking away my one shot at going home. For killing the Avatar. And I’m angry at the Avatar for dying!”

The fire must be growing; his cheeks burn with the heat. He doesn’t look to confirm, or else he’d see the faces on the other side of the flames.

“I’m angry at everyone in Ba Sing Se for letting the Fire Nation walk all over them. I’m angry at the Dai Li and the Earth King and the Air Nomads and every single Avatar in _history_ for not stopping the war. And I’m angry at my uncle for letting me leave! He…” Zuko swallows, dry as sand. “He didn’t even offer to come with me.”

“I don’t think you are,” Katara says quietly. “Angry with your uncle, I mean.”

“What do _you_ know?” Zuko snarls.

“I know a lot, actually,” Katara bites back. “I know how it feels to miss someone you thought would always be there, Zuko. It’s not him you’re angry at. Not really.”

“Then it’s everyone else in my family.” His voice creaks dangerously. “It’s my father, my grandfather, my monster of a great-grandfather. My sister—my _sister_—and my mother and—”

Something snaps: a clean break.

“And it’s _me!”_

The campfire flares up a half dozen feet. Zuko’s anger turns to ice at the loss of control. He finally looks to the others, but when the flames die away none of the three have so much as flinched.

“I think you’re right.” Katara gets up. “But why?”

He takes a step backward. She pauses at his retreat, eyes full of something that reminds Zuko of a woman he is never not thinking about at least a little bit.

“Because I’m confused,” he says. It comes out low and true. “Because I don’t think I know my own destiny anymore.”

“Does it matter?” Sokka asks.

“What are you talking about?” Zuko whirls on him. “Of _course_ it matters.”

“Hey, maybe I’m way out of line here. The destiny spirit stuff has never been my area, I’ll be the first to admit it.” Sokka stands. He comes around the opposite side of the fire from his sister, a mirror-image of brown and blue in orange light. “But it seems like if something’s your destiny, it’ll happen whether or not you see it coming, right?”

“That’s not—” His temper flares but his tongue falls still. He can’t think of a way to argue with that, though he knows there must be one. Sokka can’t be right, not about this. Zuko growls through his teeth.

“Things’ll happen when they happen,” Toph says.

She doesn’t get up or even turn her head toward Zuko. Nevertheless, he feels pinned by her attention.

“Not everything is anybody’s fault, mush-for-brains. And whether it’s your fault or not, _you_ still choose what you’re going to do now. The future’s all,” Toph waves one hand in a nebulous gesture, “eh. It’s how you react to what you have in front of you that matters. That’s how you make the future, your destiny, whatever. That’s how you figure it out, by running into it headfirst.”

She slams a fist into the opposite palm in an evocative act of punctuation.

“That’s not usually a problem for me,” Zuko says. “Running in headfirst.”

“That’s the spirit!” Sokka takes a step toward Zuko, who manages not to flinch this time.

Sokka’s arm is half-raised like he’s about to throw it around Zuko’s shoulders. He hesitates, then pats him on the bicep.

“Just don’t light us all on fire, okay?”

Zuko lets a few awkward seconds pass in silence as if he’s mulling it over. The flame of his anger is down to a smoulder now, but it’s fun to see Sokka squirm.

“Okay.” He nods. “Deal.”

“Want to hang out at our fire?” Toph asks. “We made it the old fashioned way, but I bet you could make it way cozier over there.”

“I—” Zuko glances between the three faces, people he’s managed not to drive away completely. “I think I need some time alone.”

It’s true, he realizes as the words come out. He needs some time to reign in the returned anger inside him. It needs to eat its fill before he quiets it again; little progress is still progress. He’ll be happier about it in the morning.

“But tomorrow,” Zuko promises. “Tomorrow, I’ll be there.”

Sokka claps him on the shoulder.

“I’ll be back early to patch up your boat, okay?” He smiles—a small one, but genuine.

“Good. If you don’t, you’ll never have another campfire again.”

“I’m surprised you can light one with those delicate hands,” Sokka pouts sarcastically. “I’d have thought that would be too close to doing actual work.”

“Leave him alone, Sokka,” Katara rolls her eyes.

“For now,” Toph adds.

“Night!” Sokka calls, waving behind himself as the three leave him to his fire. Zuko raises a hand, a silent goodbye none of them can see.

The hawk makes a quiet noise. He looks down at it thoughtfully.

“No.” He shakes his head. “You don’t look like a Hawky.”

* * *

“Why are we stopping on this hunk of rock, again?” Zuko complains. “You said we were going to Chung-Ling today. Nobody’s lived here for a hundred years.”

“Exactly!” Sokka casts around for a tactical excuse, since _Aang had a vision of his past life who asked to meet him on the island where he used to live before it got buried by a volcano_ won’t exactly fly here.

“We’re far from anyone who might see us,” Zuko says slowly, thinking it through himself. “If they tried to sneak up on us, we’d see them coming right away. We can plan without worrying about being overheard. Smart.”

“Yep, you got it. That’s exactly why.” Sokka looks over his shoulder. He hopes Toph plans to relieve him of Zuko-watching duty soon; even though the guy who kidnapped him last time is right here, Sokka and Katara both tend to get antsy when Aang goes into the Spirit World without both of them there to personally keep an eye on his body.

“What are Toph and Katara doing on the other side of the island?” Zuko asks.

“Just, um.” Sokka twitches. “Girl stuff!”

“What does _that_ mean?” Zuko looks confused but not angry, which makes him resemble that baby tiger-seal Sokka accused him of being not so long ago.

“They’re… checking the other half of the island! There are caves over there. Could have someone hiding in them. Toph can sense the old lava tunnels, so. Yeah.”

“Oh.” Zuko crosses his arms. “But why’d you call it—”

“Here comes Toph! I should go see what’s keeping Katara.”

“I can come with—”

“No, no, you stay here.” Sokka laughs through a tight jaw. “No sense both of us running all over. I’ll be right back. Maybe help Toph make a campfire while I’m gone.”

“But there’s nothing here to burn!”

“You’ll figure it out,” Sokka calls over his shoulder. “You’re a firebender, remember?”

“What does that have to do with—”

Sokka crosses the crest of the island, and Zuko’s voice is lost behind him.

“It’s your turn,” Sokka says.

“I am _not_ leaving Aang,” Katara replies.

Aang, as he has been for hours, sits perfectly still and silent, tattoos a-glow.

“Toph can only distract him with pai sho for so long.”

“Then _you_ can go babysit him. I’m staying here.”

“There’s nothing to even see! He’ll come out of the Spirit World when he comes out of the Spirit World.”

“That’s true.”

“So?”

“So you can go watch Zuko, since there’s nothing to see here.”

“Ugh.” Sokka crosses his arms. He stares stubbornly out at the sea.

“Hey, Katara, hey, Sokka!” Toph’s voice rings out over the high hill behind them. “We’re on our way over! Zuko is _very fast,_ by the way!”

“Wha—” Sokka looks up. Above, the tip of Zuko’s topknot peeks over the rocky ridge. He thinks fast.

“Hey!” Katara frowns as Sokka snatches the red cloak she’s had since the captured ship, which she’s been wearing to block the wind off the ocean. Sokka throws it over Aang’s body, shoves him out of his serene lotus position, and flops on top of him as if the unconscious Avatar is a big, awkwardly-stuffed pillow.

“Hi, Zuko!” Sokka waves. He shoves the conspicuous shape of an elbow underneath himself—Aang makes a terrible cushion. He’s so _pointy._

“Hey,” Zuko greets them. “What have you two been doing over here?”

“Oh, you know.” Sokka gazes wistfully over his shoulder toward the iron-grey waves. “Looking at the ocean. It reminds us of home.” He sighs, long and loud. It’s a stellar performance, if he does say so himself.

“Yep!” Katara agrees too enthusiastically. Sokka glances over and sees a rictus of a grin stretched grimly across his sister’s face. He smacks his forehead.

“Oh.” Zuko looks between the two, then out to sea. “I get that. I’ll… leave you to it.”

“Thanks.” Sokka keeps a smile firmly in place until Zuko disappears beyond the hill again. “Phew.”

The waves batter against the rocky shore. Sokka climbs off of Aang, but leaves the cloak in place just in case.

“I think we handled that very well,” Katara says after a few minutes.

“You know, I agree,” Sokka nods.

The sun starts to set. Aang is still in the Spirit World, which means Sokka and Katara are still by his side.

Behind them, there is a sound like a miniature landslide. Sokka is on his feet in an instant, sword drawn, heart pounding.

“I can sense him from the other side of the island,” Toph snaps. “I’ll know if anything happens to Aang. But it’s getting late and I am _not_ making dinner, so get your butts over there before I get so hangry I blow our cover.”

Sokka and Katara trade looks.

_“Now.”_

“Fine.” Katara throws her hands in the air. “But if Aang wakes up—”

“I’ll give you a secret and extremely subtle signal,” Toph agrees. “Now _please_, I’m starving and I think Zuko’s ready to pop a blood vessel.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Zuko asks before he’s even started his rice.

“Um,” Sokka says through a full mouth. He swallows. “We’re heading to Chung-Ling next.”

“I knew that. And then what?”

“And then…” Sokka glances from Katara, who shakes her head minutely, to Toph, who can’t tell that he’s looking at her. “Then we get some money! Somehow.”

“But after that—” Zuko cuts himself off, following the route of Sokka’s gaze. “Right. If you need to talk without me, you can just say so.”

“Okay,” Sokka says. “We need to talk without you.”

Zuko nods. He shovels rice into his mouth and doesn’t look at any of them for the rest of the meal.

“That could have gone worse,” Toph says optimistically.

Sokka looks at Aang, propped up against a rock and still as death.

Although it was weeks ago by now, he’s reminded of the endless days when Aang was unconscious on the ship, not knowing if he would live or die. Katara was a wreck; dad was a mess of worry hidden behind a mask of leadership. Sokka kept thinking back to the bleak stretch after mom’s death, how they’d survived it once. He didn’t know if they could do it a second time.

A taste of a tiny bamboo forest in the Spirit World was enough for Sokka. He can’t imagine what Aang is going through over there.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he says. “Hopefully he’ll be back in the morning.”

“And one more thing, Aang,” Roku says.

“What is it?”

The last Avatar’s face folds into a gentle smile.

“Say hello to my great-grandson for me, will you?”

Aang opens his eyes to dawn on the island where Roku once lived. Toph jostles Katara awake and smacks Sokka. They blink up at him sleepily.

“Welcome back, buddy,” Sokka yawns.

“Guys,” Aang says, “I think we can trust Zuko.”

“Are you sure?” Katara asks.

“Yes. It’s time he knows the Avatar is alive.”

* * *

“He was supposed to be here an hour ago!” Aang paces the length of the clearing and back. “You’re _sure_ you told him the right place?”

“He’s the one who picked it,” Sokka says defensively.

“And_ you’re_ sure you told him there was something really, really important you had to say?”

“I’m sure,” says Katara. “I apologized for how secretive we’ve been and everything.”

“Maybe he left,” Toph suggests. “All the commitment could have freaked him out.”

“Or he betrayed us.” Aang bites his thumbnail, then does a sharp heel-turn when he reaches the end of his pacing track. “Sokka kept saying—”

“No,” Sokka interrupts. “No, I don’t think he did.”

“What?” Katara tilts her head. “_You’re_ the one who trusts him now? Since when?”

“Call it a hunch,” he says. “My instincts say Zuko didn’t run off this time. Something must have happened.”

“Maybe his boat sank,” Toph says.

“No way, I fixed it myself.”

“Just like the _last_ time you fixed it?”

“Hey, I was under a time constraint and I’d never had to make do with saddle wax as caulking before. I used more of it this time, plus—”

“Stop,” Aang says. “Look.”

Struggling across even the short distances from one tree to the next is a feathery shape. One strong wing and one wing unmatched to the other make its path uneven. It pauses at a tree nearest Katara, then leaps. Its wings beat the air to cushion what is more a fall than a flight.

“Is that Hawky?” Aang’s eyebrows raise.

“His name’s not Hawky,” Sokka corrects. “Zuko was very specific about that.”

“But it _is_ his bird.”

“Yes,” Katara confirms. She scoops the bird into her hands, then peers into the trees. “And Zuko’s nowhere in sight. You were right, Sokka. Something must have happened to him.”

“He could be anywhere by now,” Toph says.

“No,” says Sokka, deep in thought. “The hawk can barely fly. There’s no way it could have made it here if anything happened at sea. Zuko is on the island. We just have to find him.”

“It’ll be easier to search from the air.” Aang jumps onto Appa’s head.

“I hope he’s alright,” Katara murmurs.

“He will be,” Sokka reassures his friends. “Zuko’s made it through a lot on his own.”

“Yeah!” says Toph. “I bet he’s fighting off ten bad guys at once, right this second.”

“You’ve, uh, gotten good. With the shuriken.” Zuko may be handcuffed in the back of a wagon on his way to face charges of treason, but that’s no reason not to be polite.

“Shut up.” Mai snaps the reins attached to her mongoose lizard. “I kept in practice,” she says after a few seconds.

“So did I!”

“Sure you did.” Her voice is low and deadpan. “That’s why it was so hard to take you down.”

“Took you two tries,” Zuko mutters.

“What did you say?” Her statuesque profile turns sharply in the little window between the inside of the wagon and the driver’s seat.

Zuko considers snarking back—it’s not like he can get in _more_ trouble—but it occurs to him that Azula wouldn’t care if he were returned with all his fingers attached or not. He chooses not to push his luck.

“Nothing.”

Mai returns her attention to the road. He can only see the back of her head, but it feels like her hair itself looks down at him with disdain.

For whatever reason, it’s still a more interesting sight than the dusty interior of the wagon. He should check his surroundings, look for weak spots, start the deep breathing he’ll need to ready his chi and kick a blast of fire through one of the wooden walls. He should be making a _plan._

The problem is this: part of him is sixteen and trussed up in the back of a wagon, but another part is twelve, on the precarious cusp of thirteen, standing in the shade of a cherry tree where Azula can’t see him. The latter part cannot seem to pull away from the thought of how soft Mai’s hair looks. How steady her eyes are.

How easily she got the drop on him the moment he stepped out of his boat.

Irritation surges in Zuko. His swords are still in the leaky little vessel. The sky has been threatening rain all morning; even if he gets the chance to go back for them, they’ll be in imminent danger of rusting.

“Are you alone?” Zuko asks, suddenly remembering what Toph said about Azula and her ‘circus friend.’ He has a decent guess as to who she might have meant. “Where’s Ty Lee?”

Mai is silent.

“Azula has you doing her dirty work now, huh?” Zuko huffs a laugh.

The reins snap again. The wagon hits a bump; Zuko’s head hits a crate.

“Ow.”

The mongoose lizard makes a stuttering, hissing noise. It sounds almost like laughter.

“Where are you taking me?” gets no answer either, nor does, “I thought you lost all your knives last time. Quick turnaround on restocking. Who’s your guy?”

The wagon’s wheels turn and turn. The strip of sunlight on either side of Mai’s head grows dim with fat, roiling clouds. Rain begins a percussive rhythm against the roof.

Zuko rolls onto his back. A spiderfly buzzes in the corner of the ceiling where two walls meet, busily weaving its web. There is faded paint along the molding.

“Where’d you get this wagon? Did you steal it?”

Mai’s silence is expected.

“I’ve stolen a lot of things,” Zuko says conversationally, “since I became a refugee. Uncle and I almost starved to death a couple times. It’s easy to justify taking what other people have when you’ve got nothing of your own. Or when you think the world owes it to you.”

Nothing.

“How did Azula know I was back in the Fire Nation?”

“Because you lit a boat on fire, you idiot,” Mai snaps. “I forgot how annoying you are.”

Zuko smiles. Then groans at the memory.

“I hate pirates.”

“They hate you too.”

“They sure do,” he sighs. Zuko closes his eyes. The rhythm of the cart slows and the rain quickens; he paces his breath between them. Time sways past, until finally—

Another bump in the road throws everything in the wagon, including Zuko, helter-skelter across the wooden floor. He leans into the momentum of his roll, aims his legs, and kicks. A section of the wall bursts outward. Zuko slides through, gaining a long scrape across one arm for his trouble. He lands on his feet in four inches of mud.

His legs are still chained together. Dignity won’t matter much if he lets himself get handed over to his sister. Zuko starts hopping.

He makes it most of the way to the treeline before Mai snags him by the back of the collar. She hooks an arm through the chain of the cuffs around his wrists and starts dragging him back through the mud.

She’s very strong, Zuko notes. For strategic purposes. In case it comes up later.

The mongoose lizard stares at him with its bulbous yellow eyes as they approach. Zuko stares back. After a second, he feels stupid enough for getting into a staring contest with a lizard that he looks away. His eyes land on the harness hooking the lizard to the wagon.

Zuko breathes in. Zuko breathes out.

A stream of fire burns the leather straps until they snap. Mai grunts in alarm at the sudden firebending—people never expect the breath of fire; Zuko sends silent thanks to Uncle—and drops him flat on his face in the mud.

Unfortunately, mongoose lizards are bred to stay calm around fire. Fortunately, they’re trained to run without stopping at the slightest tap to their flank. Zuko blinks mud out of his eyes, swings his legs up, and kicks the lizard in the side.

“Sorry,” he mumbles through a mouthful of dirt as the animal takes off in a spray of mud.

“No, you’re not,” Mai sighs. Zuko twists his head to see her wiping mud off her face with the wide sleeve of her robe, already soaked through from the rain.

“I was talking to the lizard.”

This is the moment when the sky cracks open like an egg and pours a sheet of water over everything.

“Ugh!” Mai hauls Zuko out of the mud and drags him around back of the wagon. She throws him bodily inside. He lands hard on the arm still stinging from its scuffle with the broken side of the wagon.

Mai climbs in behind. She shuts the doors against the downpour.

The roar of rain against wood keeps the wagon far from silent. The rain isn’t even successfully muffled by the closed doors, due to the enormous hole Zuko kicked in the wall. Water pools just inside it.

Zuko takes in a breath to light his inner fire. He visualizes it the way Uncle taught him years ago: embers in his lungs, waiting for air. Potential energy as strong as any other energy in the body. His soaked clothes begin to steam gently.

“Are you cold?” Zuko asks.

Mai glares at him, shivering. Her eye makeup runs in spidery black lines over her cheeks.

“I’m not taking the cuffs off.”

“You don’t have to.” Zuko looks up at her, then away. “Just touch my skin.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“I think you’re soaked to the bone,” he snaps, “and I can help. If you don’t want to, don’t. But I have a feeling we’ll be in here awhile.”

Mai stares morosely at the hole in the wagon. The chill of a midsummer rainstorm leaks in even while Zuko puts out heat like a furnace. It’ll be hard to keep up soon; he hasn’t eaten all day.

Dried mud itches and flakes off of him. His clothes are dry, but what Zuko wouldn’t give for a bath right now. He’d gotten used to the little comforts of human habitation in Ba Sing Se after so long without. He wonders if Sokka, Katara, and Toph could be persuaded to risk staying at an inn the next time they make it to a town—assuming the _important thing_ Katara needed to tell him isn’t _“we’re kicking you out for good.”_

And assuming he ever makes it back to them. They probably think he’s run off by now, gone to tell his father where the enemy foreigners are like a dutiful son.

The touch of a cold, long-fingered hand shocks Zuko out of his thoughts. Mai lays her palm against his bare arm.

“Fine,” she admits. “I’m cold.”

Zuko nods. He takes air into himself again, lights the embers, and sends heat out from the lines of his chi. It flows over his skin, then up to Mai’s. It’s an imprecise science; Uncle had shown him on the raft as they fled the North Pole, when a few days without food and a particularly cold night left Zuko too weak to find his own flame.

Mai isn’t a firebender, Zuko reminds himself. He keeps the heat gentle, above her skin but not touching it. A bubble of warmth spreads up her arm and across her shoulders, down her back.

Zuko realizes his eyes have fallen shut in concentration only when a sound makes him open them again. It’s a familiar noise that sends his heartbeat kicking up rapidly out of unnamed instinct.

“Thanks,” Mai says as the heat fades. She shakes out her steam-dried sleeves.

“Wait,” Zuko says. “What was—”

There is a vague movement beyond the curtain of the rain. It’s all the warning Zuko has before the side of the wagon explodes.

The wall rips away. The mud outside comes to life. It reaches into the wagon like a monstrous hand. Zuko twists onto his back, summoning a circle of flame—until the wooden floor falls away underneath him. The wagon must have tipped; he slams into the ceiling, then rolls down one wall to find his face wedged into the corner.

He spits out a mouthful of spiderfly web.

“What’s going on?” he shouts.

There is the sound of rushing water, though Zuko notices abruptly that the patter of rain has stopped. Strange—he hears wind, but the air has been still all day.

Finally, Mai’s voice cuts through the elements.

“Just take him!”

“Don’t mind if we do,” says another voice.

Sokka.

“Let’s get out of here!” And there’s Toph.

Zuko’s stomach flips as the impossible realization sinks in: they came looking for him.

A pair of arms wraps around Zuko’s shoulders from behind. He gets a glimpse of warm brown skin, then a pair of blue eyes as Katara helps her brother by hoisting Zuko’s legs.

“Uncuff me!”

“Once we take off,” Katara promises.

“What—” Zuko’s stomach does a less pleasant turn as he’s thrown into the air. He lands on soft, padded leather. A moment later, the surface beneath him rises with startling velocity. If he were standing, he wouldn’t have remained so for long.

The heavy blanket of rock holding Mai to the floor of the wagon dissolves into mud.

It’s disgusting.

She sits up. Disappearing into the sky is that big, fluffy air monster. Sitting on the big, fluffy air monster, also disappearing into the sky, is Prince Zuko.

He has a habit of disappearing on Mai. She wishes she could hate him for it.

Actually, she wishes she didn’t care at all. It’s easy to stop caring about most things. Some things are easy: boring because there’s no challenge. Some things are hard: boring because they’re tedious. Zuko has never been either.

It was easy to be eleven, on the sunrise edge of twelve, and trade first kisses with a boy who blushed the same color as the cherry blossoms over his head. It was hard to keep a secret from his sister.

It’s still hard to keep secrets from Azula. Mai sighs, and adds this to the list.

“There,” Toph says. The cuffs around Zuko’s wrists and ankles melt and reshape themselves into amorphous blobs in her hands.

He sits up, rubbing his wrist. As he turns around, the hawk chirps and hops into his lap. Katara notices a trail of blood running sluggishly down one bicep.

“What happened?” She pulls a palm of water from her waterskin and leans forward.

“Oh.” Zuko blinks as Katara runs a healing hand over the cut. “I tried to escape. Didn’t work.”

“It’s a good thing we found you when we did, then.” She risks a smile, then feels it twitch with nerves. At least if they do this in the air and it goes badly, he’ll have nowhere to run.

“Yeah,” Zuko breathes with a laugh. “It is.”

His eyes move from Katara, to Sokka—she doesn’t dare look at her brother, but she hopes hard that he isn’t conspicuously laying a hand on the hilt of his sword—to Toph. He looks over the edge of Appa’s saddle, as if confirming they really are a mile in the air.

“Um, I’m no expert on how this works,” he says, “but shouldn’t someone be flying the bison?”

“Someone is,” Katara says. She glances behind herself, meets a pair of determined gray eyes, and nods.

Katara and Sokka lean apart, revealing the Avatar.

“Hi, Zuko,” says Aang. He pulls up his headband and points to the arrow peeking out from under his hair for emphasis. “Look, I’m not dead!”

Every seeing eye locks onto Zuko. Toph goes tense; the metal in her hands wavers nervously.

Zuko blinks. Zuko sways. His mouth opens, and Katara catches a garbled grunt that sounds suspiciously like _"Not again"_ before he passes out completely.

The only sound is the whistling of high, cold wind.

“Did I _kill him?”_ Aang shouts.

* * *

Zuko sits bolt upright with a cry.

A fire crackles nearby. He’s propped up against something warm and soft and breathing—the bison. His fuzzy vision resolves itself.

Sitting cross-legged in front of him is the Avatar. Alive.

They stare at each other.

“How did you trick my sister?” Zuko croaks. “She thinks she killed you.”

Aang shrugs.

“Actually, she kind of did.”

“Oh.” Zuko looks the Avatar up and down: breathing, all extremities seemingly accounted for. He nods. “Glad you’re feeling better.”

Aang grins so brightly Zuko nearly squints against it.

“Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	4. An Open Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one was later than I'd hoped, folks! They just keep getting longer than I expect. Also, I'm going to be out of town visiting my partner (yay!!!) in a week, so that might delay the next chapter. Hope you can savor this one in the meantime!
> 
> No major content warnings this time, apart from Azula Being Azula.

Over the once-great walls of Ba Sing Se, a hawk begins a journey that will soon outstrip the continent. It cannot see the ocean nor the archipelago beyond the distant curvature of the earth, but it has always known its way home.

Through the many guarded gates of Ba Sing Se, a man drives a wagon toward the colony of New Ozai. His wagon is weighed down by its contents, but his mind is made buoyant by its own.

In the crystal caverns under Ba Sing Se, a fresh-faced deserter lights his way in the dark. He knows the name of the man he seeks, but his courage comes from one final cup of tea and a message burning bright in his pocket.

From the flooded fields that feed Ba Sing Se, a woman in a wide, flat hat takes her leave for the season. South is the way home, but she will not stop until she has retraced the steps of her distant ancestors far past the Foggy Swamp.

In Ba Sing Se, a man cuts a cake into four equal pieces. He takes it with his tea.

* * *

“Those two get along way too well,” Sokka says. “I mean, look at them. You’d expect them to be mortal enemies. One from the Fire Nation, one from the Air Temple. It’s the balance of the food chain. But I guess it just goes to show, the natural order of things is never what we expect it to be. We are but humble travelers in a mysterious universe whose whims are greater and more complex than we know.”

“Are you on the cactus juice again?” Toph asks.

“No! But c’mon,” he points to the lemur and the hawk, who are nestled peacefully together in the shade of Appa’s leg. “Momo is cleaning his _feathers_. You don’t see that every day.”

“I sure don’t,” Toph agrees.

“Exactly my point, I—Ugh.” He smacks himself in the forehead. “One of these days I’m not going to fall for that.”

* * *

The Avatar, blindfolded and serious, slides across hard earth as easily as if it were ice or air.

Zuko stands on the other side of the creek that runs through their most recent campsite with his arms crossed. He means to watch out for danger; he’s distracted by the fluid synchronicity and trust Aang has with his teachers. It makes him ache for the days of training with Uncle, though he was a poor student to a patient master.

“When’s it your turn?”

“What?” Zuko refuses to give Sokka the satisfaction of knowing he startled him. There’s a bug near his ear, that’s all.

“You know,” Sokka gestures to the intense training going on a few feet away. He casually dodges a flying stream of water Aang thoughtlessly redirects straight at his head. “When does Aang start jerkbending practice?”

“What’s—Don’t _call_ it that!”

“Jerkbending,” Sokka chuckles to himself, wiping away an imaginary tear at his own hilarity. “Classic. Just let me know when I need to start fireproofing Appa.”

Behind them, Appa raises his head. He lows in what sounds like affront.

Zuko opens his mouth, not sure how to say _Aang hasn’t asked_ or _I haven’t offered_. It did occur to him; the Avatar has checked off three elements—or two and a half, to hear Toph tell it. He only needs one more, which happens to be the very element Zuko has trained to bend for over a decade.

It would be easy to say he’s self-conscious about bending around the people he hurt with his fire so many times. It would be easy to admit that a few months ago, he was still getting his basics drilled and re-drilled into him. It would be easy to say no, and leave it at that, and turn an intimidating glare on anyone who tried to convince him otherwise.

The intimidating glare has never worked so well on Aang. Which would be a problem, if Aang were asking Zuko to be his firebending teacher, but the fact of the matter is, Aang seems as eager to avoid the topic as he is.

Which is fine by him.

The question still hangs in the air. Zuko frantically searches for whatever words will convince Sokka to drop it without making him suspicious. He thinks he’s almost got it—

“That could draw attention to us,” he begins—only to find Sokka isn’t there anymore.

Zuko twists his head around. Nobody to be seen over near the bison, nor by the bedrolls.

The missing warrior reveals himself with a scream of _“Sneak attack!”_ which is all too soon cut tragically short.

“Sokka, sneak attacks don’t work—”

“—if you yell it out loud!” Aang and Zuko say, in two very different tones but eerie unison.

Aang looks at Zuko and smiles wildly at the coincidence. Zuko feels his face reddening.

By some small miracle, Toph and Katara make for a perfect distraction from his embarrassment. Maybe working well with others is a useful skill to have after all.

“Is this normal?” Zuko asks Sokka quietly as Katara bends a wad of mud into Toph’s face.

“Eh,” Sokka wiggles his hand back and forth in a _more or less_ gesture.

Aang reminds the two of whom they’re meant to be training, and Katara makes a gracious exit.

Zuko is cordially invited to _go have some fun_ by way of Aang grabbing him by the arm as he, Sokka, and Toph head for town. There is no unaggressive way to turn him down, and something tells him Katara wouldn’t be overjoyed to find Zuko hanging around while she gathers her dignity.

He can relate.

“I need new swords,” Zuko comments as they pass a shop with a shiny masakari in the window.

“I don’t think that’s in the budget right now, buddy,” Sokka says with regret. He carries his own sword in its sheath lazily over his shoulders, flaunting both the exquisite craftsmanship and the fact that he has never owned one before.

“It’s not enough for any swords,” Aang says, “but what should we get with our last silver piece?”

“We can get more money.” Toph points to a shell game in the alley below, and that’s about where the trouble starts.

“The middle one,” the boy with the scar blurts as soon as the shells stop moving.

His blind friend smiles, wide and with a whole lot of teeth. She must not know what a face is supposed to look like, poor kid. Great for business, though, the whole not-seeing thing.

“Are you sure about that?” she asks.

“Yes,” says the boy.

“You’re really, _really_ sure?”

“Yes!”

Tagaki briefly wonders how someone goes through whatever happened with his face and yet manages to remain such a sucker. Then again, he sees a lot of suckers in this line of work. The boy is far from the biggest or even most memorable.

“I guess I have_ no choice_ but to trust my seeing friend,” the blind girl says. She reaches out to tap the middle shell.

The scarred boy smacks a hand against the back of his own head.

“Ow,” he mutters. A small stone clatters to the ground near his feet. He doesn’t look surprised by it.

_Ah,_ Tagaki thinks as the boy’s entire life’s story falls into place. Mediocre enough firebender to get himself burned, guileless enough to get taken in by a game like this, socially inept enough that half his friends are twelve-year-olds, and now getting pelted with rocks by what must have been some other kids running past up on the street.

Bullying. You hate to see it.

Still, the girl listened to him and now she’s got to pay the price—the price being one silver piece. Tagaki raises the empty shell and shakes his head sympathetically.

“Sorry, little lady. Better luck next time.”

“That was our last silver piece,” she gripes to her friends. The boy in the headband and the other with the sword sigh dejectedly.

Speaking of the sword—Tagaki feels his own eyebrow quirk to his hairline. That’s either a Piandao original or an excellent knockoff. From the way the kid holds it, he’s got no idea what the thing is worth.

“Oh, well. Egg noodles for dinner again,” the youngest says with forced cheer.

“Wait.” The boy with the scar digs around in his bag. He pulls out a silver piece and holds it with a level of reverence that Tagaki usually only sees from folks who have been at his table a lot longer than these kids.

“You want to play again?” he offers enticingly.

“Yes,” says the boy. He lays an encouraging hand on the blind girl’s shoulder. “She does.”

Tagaki smiles.

The smile doesn’t last long.

“That was amazing, Toph!” Aang laughs, laden down with groceries and grinning.

“It was some impressive acting,” Zuko says. “When you were lying to that guy, you sounded just like—”

He goes silent. Toph’s eyes are wide. She bites her lip, blatantly holding back a laugh.

“Just like what?” Sokka asks.

Zuko’s face turns a shade of beet-red that cannot be a promising sign for his blood pressure.

“Where you _hustling me_ at _pai sho?”_

* * *

Azula, daughter of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai, youngest master of the cold fire in sixty-four years, Princess of the Fire Nation and heir-apparent to the throne, is having a bad day.

“She should have written back days ago,” she says. A handmaiden runs a pearl comb through her hair: long, even stroke number eighty-four, eighty five.

“Maybe nothing happened,” Ty Lee suggests. She lifts one hand to scratch her ankle, then puts it back to the floor next to its twin, which holds her upside-down in perfect balance.

“If it were boring,” Azula says, “she would tell us so. That’s her favorite news to report.”

“So you think _something_ happened!”

Azula nods. Ty Lee beams, delighted at having reached the correct conclusion.

“It has to do with this ‘upgrade’ of hers,” Azula muses. “Why would she ask for new weapons she couldn’t buy herself?”

“Azula, you love getting new stuff! Yesterday you bought that sash, remember?”

“Yes, Ty Lee, I was there.” Azula rolls her eyes. Reflected in the mirror, the girl behind her relaxes out of her handstand to sit on the floor. “And thank you for telling me it brought out my eyes,” she adds. “You were right, as always.”

“You’re welcome!” Ty Lee brightens. “If I can’t use my eye for color to make the most beautiful girl in the world look her best, what’s the point?”

“Hold that thought. We’re going to come back to this thread of conversation in a moment,” Azula assures her. “But Mai said ‘need.’ I _need_ money for new weapons. Not want. This isn’t about vanity for her.”

“So what do you think it _is_ about?”

Azula meets her own eyes in the mirror. The handmaiden finishes her task, bows, and leaves at the princess’s waved dismissal. Azula brushes away a lock of hair that has fallen from its ranks.

Her hand passes by, briefly covering the right side of her face. In the mirror, all becomes its opposite.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But you’re going to find out for me.”

* * *

“Hey, Sparky,” Toph greets.

“Hey. Are you busy?”

“Just counting out today’s earnings,” she says, forcing herself to cheerfulness. “Sokka’s fake guard scam was a real moneymaker. Sorry he sent you home early, I thought your idea sounded pretty fun.”

“It’s okay. He was probably right. Um,” Zuko scratches the back of his head. “Speaking of money. Can I—”

“You wanted new swords, right?”

“Yeah.” Zuko nods tightly. “I need them.”

“Well, come on down here and let Mama Toph give you what you need!” She considers how the words taste and sticks her tongue out. “Blech, no, don’t ever call me that. I need a better nickname as the group’s new sponsor. Let me know if you think of anything.”

“Sure. Will do.” Zuko actually sounds amused. He’s starting to pick up on the concept of _jokes,_ which Toph decides to claim credit for before Sokka notices. He sits by Toph, cross-legged, and peers at her piles of coin.

“Here.” She shoves a bag of mixed copper, silver, and gold that she hasn’t gotten around to sorting yet. “Count out what you want. I don’t know how much swords cost.”

Zuko opens the bag. There is a quiet, rhythmic clink as he picks up coins and sets them down, counting quietly under his breath.

Normally, sitting in silence is their preferred method of passing time together. Zuko doesn’t like to talk much—or he doesn’t have much to talk _about_ that makes for lighthearted conversation—and Toph respects that. She’s been traveling for months with a group of people who are all extremely fond of the sounds of their own voices. Toph herself can admit to falling into that category too, but it’s nice, sometimes, to let go of the feeling that she has to make noise.

This is not one of those times.

“I bet this isn’t what you were expecting when you joined up with the Avatar,” Toph says. She told herself she wasn’t going to keep complaining or she’d end up sounding like Sokka, but the constant needling reminder of Katara’s voice in her head is hard to ignore.

“The scams?”

“Getting lectured all day long by Sweetness over there. She acts like she can tell us all what to do. It drives _me_ nuts, and I’m actually used to having friends by now. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.”

“She’s—” Zuko stops, weighs a few silver pieces in his hand, and sets them down. “I don’t mind it.”

Toph blows her bangs out of her eyes.

“Of course _you_ don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” Toph snarks. “You tell me, Mister Mommy Issues.”

The moment she says it, Toph knows she’s struck a nerve the size of the nearest mountain. Zuko freezes, then takes a deep breath. She gears up for a screaming match—it’s not his fault, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved at the idea of taking her anger out on _somebody—_

But Zuko gets up and walks away without a word. His sword money sits on the ground, forgotten.

“Hey-ah!” Zuko’s leg flies up, straight, the kind of high kick Uncle would be proud of. _Excellent form,_ the old man’s voice supplies.

The memory of Uncle that lives in the back of Zuko’s mind repeats the praise after the swift series of punches that follow, and again at the sweep of his foot along the stone platform that juts out into the deep river running past him.

He had chosen this spot to practice firebending for its seclusion. No one above, where the group has made their camp, can see him unless they decide to dangle their upper body off the flat edge of the cliff. He is hidden by an overhang and too low to be easily spotted by anyone approaching from the southern side across the river.

It’s hugely beneficial, that isolation, because Zuko has not managed more than a candle’s worth of flame since they got here. Since he left Mai in the rain.

Since he found out the Avatar was alive.

He lunges forward once more, fist extended with the other tucked tight to his body. A burst of smoke drifts from his knuckles.

Zuko groans.

“Zuko!” A voice calls from above. It nearly sends him leaping out of his skin; if he weren’t a completely pathetic excuse for a firebender right now, he would probably have thrown a ball of flame at the source.

A lean, brown arm waves over the edge of the cliff—paired with the voice, he’s sure it’s Sokka.

“What?” he shouts testily.

“I’m going to spend some money!”

“That’s nice?”

“Get up here and come with me!”

“I’m busy!”

“Don’t you need new swords?”

“I’ll do it later!”

“Just come with! You shouldn’t go by yourself!”

“Why, because you think I’m going to get kidnapped again? Or because you’re afraid I’ll run off and tell my father that the Avatar is actually alive and—”

A telltale, rhythmic whistling shoots toward his head. He ducks the boomerang, then glares up at Sokka, who has crawled onto his stomach to lean over the cliff, apparently for the purpose of nearly decapitating Zuko.

“What was that for?”

“I was sick of yelling,” Sokka says. Then, in a whisper that carries a mile down the river, adds, “And maybe you should be a little more careful throwing around the Ah-word?”

Zuko flushes.

“Fine. But we’re getting in, grabbing what we need, and getting out, okay? I don’t want to spend all day shopping.”

“An hour, tops,” Sokka says, raising a hand. “Warrior’s honor.”

“That anything like an _Avatar promise?_” Zuko mutters under his breath.

“Stop,” Zuko says. “What are you doing?”

“I told you the other day, I’ve been thinking of getting a messenger hawk for myself!”

“We already have a hawk.” Zuko crosses his arms and scowls. Sokka wonders if he practices that scowl or if he’s just naturally talented in that area. It’s a good thing he hasn’t gotten his swords yet; now that he’s on their side, it should be illegal for him to look intimidating.

“But he can barely fly,” Sokka points out. “Also, he’s _your_ hawk.”

“Who would you even send messages to, anyway?” Zuko demands, completely ignoring Sokka’s perfectly valid points. “Messenger hawks have to be trained to know where to go. You can’t just send them wherever.”

“Oh. Didn’t know that.” He looks at the tower of birds coming in and flying out. The combination of utility and beauty in the creatures bred for this job appeals to him—and so does the thought of looking as cool as Zuko does with the hawk on his arm, not that Sokka would ever admit it.

“So, are we going to the weapons shop now? You know, where they sell the things we _actually need?_”

“Nah, I’m gonna get a hawk first.”

Zuko groans between his teeth. The sound of someone’s palm hitting their forehead is one Sokka is used to hearing from much closer up.

“We don’t—”

“You can’t stop me, Zuko—”

Sokka’s back hits a stone wall before he knows what’s happening. A firm hand closes over his mouth; an asymmetrical pair of amber eyes meet his from the span of a breath away.

“Don’t call me that here,” Zuko hisses.

Sokka is a little surprised that his panicked heartbeat hasn’t punched Zuko in the chest, considering how hard it’s hammering and how close Zuko is pressed into his space. The guy runs hot—definitely a firebender thing, that must be why Sokka is sweating—and has a snarl on his face like he’s about to bite Sokka’s head clean off.

He isn’t moving, which leaves Sokka one course of action to get out of his grip.

“Wha—Eugh, did you just _lick_ my _hand?”_ Zuko leaps back and wipes his palm frantically on his tunic.

“Tried and true sibling warfare. Learn it!” He gives a smug smile, until the context of _sibling warfare_ for Zuko hits him “Uh. I mean—Sorry.”

Zuko glares at him from under his loose fringe of hair. He had it down when he was training and Sokka didn’t give him time to put it back up. He thinks it’s a better look like this, anyway.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Believe it or not, there was a time when my sister wasn’t actively trying to kill me.”

“Right, good,” Sokka coughs. “That’s good. So what _should_ I call you?”

Zuko purses his lips for a second.

“Lee.”

“Aw, man! That was going to be _my_ Fire Nation cover name,” Sokka pouts.

“You can still use it,” Zuko says. “There’s a million Lees.”

“Thanks, Other Lee_._ Now wait here while I buy my hawk.” Before Zuko can object again, Sokka sprints into the building.

One particular hawk catches his eye almost immediately. Its tall, proud brow feathers and sharp beak stand a cut above the rest. It looks at him and squawks. It must be a sign.

“Hawky,” he says happily, “welcome to Team Avatar.”

Sokka’s introductory speech to the newest member of their family is cut short when he runs directly into Zuko.

“Hey!” Sokka yelps. With a flap of wings, Hawky takes off from Sokka’s arm—which windmills in the air to keep his balance—and alights on top of his head.

Zuko doesn’t react to nearly being bowled over. He’s too busy staring daggers through a bulletin board of community announcements, for sale signs, wanted posters—

Wanted posters.

“This is… not good,” Zuko says.

“You’re telling me,” Sokka replies. “That’s—Wait, what are you looking at?”

“This!” Zuko points to a poster proclaiming an army messenger hawk missing in action. “They’re searching for my hawk. They want to take him back to—What are _you_ looking at?”

Silently, Sokka points at the impressive artistic rendition of their good friend, The Runaway.

“Oh,” Zuko says. “Yeah, that might be worse.”

“You talk to her.”

“What, by myself? Why don’t you want to come?”

“She’d take it better coming from you. I barely know her.”

“Oh, come on. You two get along like a—is saying ‘like a house on fire’ offensive in the Fire Nation?”

“No.”

“Did she hurt your feelings or something?”

“_No._”

“Where are you going? Zuko! Ugh. Guess it’s just me and you, Hawky.”

* * *

All failure is a lesson. Shame is a disease caused by a lack of self-forgiveness. Growth is possible; growth is inevitable. It takes work and practice and sacrifice, but it is.

Aang takes a deep breath, readjusts his hands, and—

“You bought a _tsungi horn?”_

“Oh!” Aang nearly drops the instrument on his foot, which would be bad considering it weighs almost as much as he does. He turns to see Zuko’s flabbergasted face, brow pinched and mouth hanging open. “Hi, Zuko. Yeah, check this out!”

He fits his lips around the mouthpiece and bends all the air he can muster through it. The long, wavering note sends a flock of birds across the river wheeling into the sky.

He pulls his mouth away with a gasp.

“See?” he says, looking over his shoulder. Zuko has his hands pressed flat against his ears.

“That,” he says, “is _not_ how you play that thing.”

Aang pouts.

“I know,” he sighs. “It still sounds terrible. I need a lot of practice.”

He puts it back to his mouth and tries again, alternating the strength of his breath. He thinks it sounds a little better this time. He doesn’t make any animals flee in droves, anyway, so that’s progress.

The sound cuts off abruptly when Zuko shoves his fist down the bell of the horn.

“At _least_ get a, a scroll or something,” he pleads—if it’s possible to plead while also sounding incandescently enraged. “You don’t know the first thing about how this works, do you?”

“I know some!” Aang says defensively. He’s seen other people do it. That’s worked well for him so far when he needs to learn things; baking, playing the pipe, and waterbending all come to mind.

“Sure doesn’t sound like it.”

“I’d like to see you do better,” Aang taunts irritably. Zuko glares at him for such a long, tense moment that Aang is worried he’s about to steal the tsungi horn and throw it into the river.

He does grab the instrument away from Aang—which is an impressive disarming movement, considering the neck of it wraps around his shoulder and hip—but not for the purpose he expects.

“Fine,” Zuko says. He sits down, puts his own mouth to the horn, and plays.

Aang thinks it might be _his_ turn to pass out from shock. As it turns out, Zuko isn’t a half-bad tsungi hornist. The tune is simple and a little hesitant at first, like he can’t remember exactly how it goes, but he _is_ carrying a tune, which is more than can be said for Aang.

“That’s how it’s done. Don’t,” Zuko says the second his lips leave the mouthpiece of the horn, before he has to take a quick breath to finish his sentence, “tell _anyone_ about this.”

It takes a second before Aang’s brain catches up enough to let him speak.

“I won’t,” he promises, “as long as you teach me.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No!” He runs a hand around the bell of the horn. “I’m not that good, anyway.”

“You’re better than I am! We can figure it out together.” Aang curls his hands over the edge of the bell and gives Zuko his best big, begging eyes. The look works on Katara. Usually Sokka, too. He’s got a great track record with people who can see him doing it.

“I said no.” Zuko squints. “What are you doing with your face? Cut it out.”

“How else am I supposed to learn?”

“You don’t _need _to learn.”

“But I have it! I might as well use it. Wouldn’t it be better with your help than if I just try to figure it out on my own?”

“I—”

“In fact, it would be irresponsible of you to let me mess around and risk doing it wrong, don’t you think? When you have all this knowledge and wisdom and—”

“Shut up!” Zuko runs a hand through his hair. “We’re talking about the tsungi horn,” he says quietly, like a reminder to himself.

“Yeah,” Aang agrees, taken aback. “What else would we be talking about?”

“Nothing. Look,” Zuko looks uncomfortable. “I’ll show you some basic stuff. But don’t tell the others. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“Okay,” Aang says. A bothersome little thought won’t leave him alone, hasn’t since the day he found them at the hot spring, and he decides to be brave. “I’m good at keeping secrets, Zuko.”

Zuko scoffs. “Yeah, I bet.”

“No, really.” Aang sits down next to Zuko and crosses his legs. “It won’t be the only secret of yours I’m keeping, even.”

Zuko looks up at him, alarm in his eyes before they narrow into suspicion.

“What—” he glances over his shoulder, but Toph and Sokka are talking far up the hill and Katara is on her way to join them. “What secret?”

Aang trails his fingers through the loose dirt in front of him, doodling meaningless, swirling patterns.

“When you told everyone about what you’ve been up to the last few months,” he says, swallowing down the confusing fear he feels about addressing this huge thing they know in common, the only two in the world who share it. “You left out the part where you saved me.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yeah.” Aang looks up at Zuko, who stares out over the river with his hair falling into his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

Zuko sighs.

“It didn’t seem important.”

“You don’t have to lie—”

“No, really.” He finally looks at Aang. His eyes have the same unnerving focus as the first day they met. “You know why I did it. I didn’t free you from Zhao because it was the right thing to do, so stop turning this into something it’s not.”

His voice is firm and harsh—but if he’s angry with anyone, it isn’t Aang, and if he’s looking for a fight, he won’t get one here. Aang waits.

“Your friends,” Zuko finally says, “they know how I… how I was. About hunting you. It wouldn’t have told them anything new. And since I thought you were dead, I didn’t think they’d believe me.”

“And that’s it?”

“What else do you want me to say?” Zuko’s outbursts are clearer and clearer every day; his anger, as often as not, comes from fear. Aang wonders what he’s afraid of. “I’m not a _hero,_ alright? I’m not proud of what I did or why I did it. All it got me was a concussion and another bounty on my head. It got _you_ swords to your throat, so don’t pretend it’s a fun story we can sit around and have a good, long laugh about. You could have gotten killed.”

“So could you,” Aang points out. Zuko grunts.

The moment the mask came away from Zuko’s unconscious face, all those months ago, Aang felt his whole world shift. It wasn’t as dizzying a tilt as realizing a century had passed him by, that every place he’d ever been was unrecognizable, but it was close. He had only just found a new version of stability; Zuko, for all he was scary and dangerous and no fun, was a load-bearing pillar of Aang’s understanding of this new world.

Then he wasn’t.

He wore the face of a spirit and didn’t shout or bend. He worked alone, away from his ship and crew. He fought without armor. He had no title, no name. He was the complete opposite of everything Zuko had ever been.

Now, Aang looks at him and sees two people at once, like characters written on thin, overlapping paper screens: the Fire Nation prince; the Blue Spirit. An adversary; an ally. As complex as any person in the world, and as worthy of being given a second chance.

“That’s not all I got from it,” Aang says.

“What?” Zuko raises his head, confusion widening his right eye. His hair flops into his face.

“The swords at my throat. It was scary, sure, but it also got us out of there. And I learned something, too.”

“Are you going to make me guess?” Zuko sighs, exasperated.

“No.” Aang smiles, pouring the thought of friendship into it so hard he hopes to make Zuko smile back through sheer force of will. “I learned we make a _great_ team.”

Zuko sputters.

“I—We don’t—_That’s_ what you—?” He stops, stares at Aang for what feels like a full revolution around the sun, and says, “Huh.”

“It’s okay, take your time,” Aang shrugs. He leans back and folds his arms behind his head.

The river runs lazily below them, and the day is cloudy but warm. Aang soaks in the afternoon while Zuko struggles with himself a foot away.

The weight of heavy brass knocks the wind out of him when the tsungi horn lands in his lap.

“If you’re going to play it right,” Zuko says, standing over Aang with his arms crossed, “you should start by learning your scales.”

* * *

Mai stares at the wanted poster.

“They stayed,” she says flatly to no one, or maybe to the universe at large, which is the only other thing in existence with the sheer cubic volume to rival her capacity for disdain, “on the same island.”

She sighs. A random gust of wind sighs back.

“At least my order is ready. Decent timing.”

The new shuriken spins easily in her hand. Steel is ideal, but given the circumstances, this will get the job done.

The blade embeds itself three inches deep in the nearest tree.

Not bad. A little more practice to get used to the weight, and she’ll be ready.

* * *

Zuko’s been avoiding her.

Toph figures that’s fair. She’s stubborn too, and her mastery of the silent treatment is only rivaled by her mastery of earthbending itself. Still, being on the receiving end is _annoying._

And it makes her feel guilty. Like she did something wrong. Which she _did,_ but is Sparky really going to make her admit it? It’s bad enough having Katara on her case these days. Zuko’s silence and the way his heart twists itself in knots when he sees her are as bad as Sugar Queen’s mom-ing.

Or maybe that’s just Toph’s conscience, kicking her in the gut.

It’s fine. At least, it’ll be fine soon, because Toph has a foolproof plan to make it up to him.

“Rise and shine!” Toph crows like a rooster-goat.

“Huh?” Zuko sits upright so fast she half expects him to topple over. His arms are up in a firebending stance and his heart rate is through the roof. “What’s going on—Where am I?”

“I earthbent you up here while you were asleep,” Toph explains. The hill she tossed him to is far enough from where the rest of the group sleeps that she’s not worried about being interrupted.

“You did _what?”_ Zuko’s mouth opens and closes like he wants to either scream or start breathing fire. “Why?”

“Because you and I are going on a little field trip.” Toph cracks her knuckles. “Welcome to Operation What-Sokka-Doesn’t-Know-Won’t-Hurt-Him.”

“You want to—” Zuko runs a hand over his face. “Toph. I’m not going to do the… the scam I wanted to pull yesterday.”

“Why not?”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“That’s the best time for crime.”

“I don’t have my swords.”

“We’ll pick some up on the way.”

“The shop isn’t going to be _open.”_

“I know.” Toph puts her hands on her hips and waits for him to get it.

“No. No way. Those cheaters in the alley are one thing. Whoever runs that shop hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“You don’t know that,” Toph argues happily. “Maybe they’re selling weapons to your dad! That would be pretty evil.”

“I’m not going to commit burglary with you.”

“You’ve stolen plenty of stuff before. What’s different?”

“Not with _you!”_

Toph freezes. Zuko freezes. The world keeps turning.

“Oh,” she says at last.

“I’m going back to bed.” Zuko lies down and rolls onto his side, facing away from her.

Zuko knows as well as Toph does that she won’t be fooled by him pretending to sleep. His heart’s still hopping like a rabiroo with a foot rash; his fist is clenched in his blanket like he’s trying to strangle it.

She leaves anyway, eventually. He doesn’t come down from the hill.

Zuko wakes up just after dawn. He yawns, stretches, and nearly cuts his foot open when he steps out of his sleeping bag.

“What the—”

Lying crossed on the ground beside him are the two most flawless broadsword blades he’s ever seen. They have no handles, but when he picks one up and peers down the edge, there isn’t a nick nor a bend in sight. He balances the other on the flat of his hand: it’s less ductile than he prefers, but smooth and even-weighted like someone molded every inch of it with unsurpassed care and attention—

And striped unevenly with familiar coloring. Waves of pink and black, identical to Mai’s ornate shuriken, run through the metal of the blades.

Zuko smiles before he realizes he’s done it. He wipes the expression off his face angrily, then doesn’t need to try to keep it that way when he spies the pouch next to the swords. Inside, there’s enough gold to buy a new set of dao three times over.

_Here’s your stupid money,_ the gesture seems to say. _Since you wanted to buy new swords so bad._

He thinks about throwing all of it—money and swords and bedroll, too, just to be contrary—into the river. Uncle’s voice, speaking directly in the way he rarely does, stops him: _Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source._

Pride has done him no favors, ever. He’ll swallow the backhanded gift of swords, then, but the money can go right back where it came from for all he cares.

…after he uses what he needs to get new handles. He can’t go around clutching bare metal. But after that, he’ll never need to accept another ‘gift’ from Toph.

Toph wakes up at noon to the vibrations of Zuko practicing with his new swords. He’s down in the little cove by the river where he goes to throw his flames, spinning her gifts around his head like he’s trying to cut a swarm of flies in half.

Apology accepted, then. She smiles. Most seeing people would probably have left a note, something like, _I know you’ll need handles and I can’t bend those, here’s some money, take what you need. Sorry again. Love, Toph._

She scoffs. Clearly, the whole writing thing is way overrated.

* * *

“Hi, Zuko!” Aang shouts from ten feet away as he appears over the hill, like Zuko is a long-lost friend he hasn’t seen in a hundred years. Zuko wonders if there are any of those left; maybe this little ragtag group is all the Avatar has in the world.

The thought makes him feel guilty enough that he attempts a friendly smile. Not for the first time, he wishes they were staying somewhere with a mirror; every skill he has ever mastered has come from tireless practice. _Being nice_, he’s learning, requires the same dedication.

Katara has a small fire going under her cooking pot. Zuko watches her bend its contents with fascination.

“Have you always done it like that?” he asks, kneeling on the other side of the fire.

Katara glances up at him, face quirked in an expression of confusion she usually reserves for Sokka, like she’s not sure if she should be offended or not but doesn’t trust one way or the other.

“Done what, how?”

“Used your bending to cook.” At Katara’s continued stare, he looks away and adds gruffly, “I’ve just never seen someone do that before.”

“Sometimes, when I was a kid. I’d give the older women a hand by doing this,” she says cautiously. “I didn’t have very good control back then, though.”

“Yeah,” he huffs with a laugh. He remembers Katara’s lack of control _very_ well. One of the first times he ever saw her bend, she froze her brother to the deck of Zuko’s ship.

Katara’s eyes narrow.

“I’m a _lot_ better now,” she adds, pulling a whip of soup out of the pot and holding it like she’s waiting for Zuko to make one more sassy remark before she sends him flying down the hill.

“Ooh,” Aang teases, “you better watch out.”

“I know you are,” Zuko says hurriedly, remembering in vivid detail the last time he tried to fight Katara—the few seconds of it, at least, before he was knocked unconscious in the snow.

She smiles victoriously and lets the soup fall back into the pot.

“Why?” Katara asks. “Don’t people here use firebending to cook?”

“Maybe some do,” he shrugs. “Normal people. I never had to. Prince, and all.” He gestures sarcastically to himself.

“Not even when you were on the run?”

“Uncle and I tried to avoid firebending when we could help it, at least when we stopped in a town. He would make campfires with his bending, though. Or tea. But I—” Zuko shifts uncomfortably at the memory. The mantle of his former stubborn pride sits over him like an itchy, ill-fitting cloak. “I didn’t want to.”

“Why not?” Aang chimes in.

“It’s stupid. I was stupid.”

“Yeah,” Katara agrees. Zuko looks up and sees a twinkle in her eye. Turnabout’s fair play.

Zuko rolls his eyes and bites back a smile. Aang, grinning like a fool at Katara, clearly has no such impulse.

“I was taught that firebending was for honorable combat. Using it to do chores wasn’t,” he hesitates, not sure how Katara or Aang will react, “_proper_.”

“That’s interesting,” is all Katara has to say about it. Then, with that same sharp gleam in her eye, “Is that why you let Sokka lose a fight with the spark rocks last night? I didn’t realize lighting our fires was so far beneath you, your Highness.”

“I liked watching Sokka struggle,” Zuko shrugs off the question. Thankfully, Katara accepts the joke with a laugh and doesn’t pry.

“All sorts of places have different rules like that around bending,” Aang says. “In some parts of the Earth Kingdom, it’s rude to bend with shoes on. And you never, _ever_ earthbend indoors.”

“Remember the North Pole?” Katara rolls her eyes. “They don’t even consider healing real waterbending.”

“Then next time Sangok hits himself with a water whip and gets a nosebleed, he can heal himself too,” Aang says.

“I’d love to see him try.” Katara laughs. “What about at the Air Temples?”

“Air Nomads used airbending for _everything.”_ Aang’s voice is pure, soft excitement as he talks about his people. “There was this fruit tart recipe that was impossible to get right if you didn’t bend air into the filling after it came out of the oven. It would just collapse otherwise. And the temples were built so air could flow freely almost anywhere you went, even where they couldn’t be open to the sky.”

“That explains why they’re so drafty,” Zuko says with a smile. Aang and Katara look at him strangely—he adds _making jokes_ to his list of skills to practice when nobody else is around.

“You’ve been to an Air Temple?” Aang asks.

“Oh.” Zuko rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I’ve been to all of them. When I was hunting you? Uh.”

He expects anger. Zuko knows the temples were sacred places; he knew it years ago, when he climbed dizzying heights and rappelled down cliffsides for the purpose of throwing fire into corners that had not seen light for a century.

The Western Air Temple was the worst in that regard, with its badger-rabbit warren tunnels running deep into the cliff. In one of its rooms, his fire had revealed nothing but scorch marks that banded the walls perfectly at eye level. He’d left soot of his own alongside the hundred-year-old remnants. In the dim light, without touching to see if his hand came away black, the old and new marks were indistinguishable.

Someone had died in that room. Probably several people, and at the hands of a firebender standing precisely where Zuko stood.

He doesn’t expect Aang to smile.

“I think you’re the only other person alive who’s seen all four.” His eyes are huge and full of hope. “Maybe you can help me show Katara, Sokka, and Toph around someday. I want to take them when this is all over.”

Zuko’s mouth opens without his permission. There aren’t words to answer Aang’s suggestion; if there are words at all for how it makes him feel, he doesn’t know them. Shocked, maybe. Confused. Angry. Guilty. Honored.

“I’d definitely like to see the others,” Katara says kindly, saving Zuko the mortification of waiting for his own body to let him speak. “The Southern Air Temple was beautiful.”

“I almost broke my leg getting to that one,” Zuko says, because of course the first thing he manages to add to the conversation is unrepentantly stupid.

“Oh, no!” Katara laughs. “I didn’t realize you were so close behind us then.”

“What?”

“At the Southern Air Temple,” she explains.

“Yeah,” agrees Aang. “I thought you didn’t catch up until Kyoshi. We must have just missed you.”

“I didn’t follow you to the Southern Air Temple.” Zuko shakes his head. “You were right. I lost your trail until Kyoshi Island.”

“Then when were you there?”

“A year, eight months, and nineteen days before I got to the South Pole.” Zuko thinks for a second. “No, fourteen days. We lost some time near Whale Tail Island because I got sick.”

The soup in Katara’s pot stops swirling as her hand stills and falls into her lap. She and Aang stare at him with identical expressions of utter bafflement.

“What?” Zuko asks. “I ate some bad fish, okay? It’s hard to keep fresh food on a ship.”

“Why were you looking for the Avatar so long ago?” Katara looks from Zuko to Aang and back. “He was still in an iceberg.”

“I—” Zuko blinks. “I was banished.”

“Sure, but—”

“Forget it,” he snaps. “Doesn’t matter.” His stomach fills with the heavy poison of Zhao, mocking the impossibility of his quest: _He would have let you return by now, Avatar or no Avatar._ He doesn’t need to endure the same thing, however well-intentioned, from Katara or Aang.

“So,” Aang says awkwardly, “You went to the Air Temple while you had food poisoning? That’s no fun.”

“How do you think I almost broke my leg?” _That_ memory, at least, has turned humorous with time. “I had to stop climbing every ten feet to throw up.”

“Gross!” Katara groans. “I’m trying to make dinner here.”

“That reminds me of one time when I was visiting a friend on Kangaroo Island!” Aang jumps to his feet and assumes the posture of a kangaroo. “We were both on its back, but Sado didn’t warn me she had a problem with motion sickness, so—”

“Aang, you are _not_ getting soup if you finish that sentence.”

“Sorry, Katara.” Aang sits down. With a sly glance at Zuko, he whispers loudly, “I’ll tell you later.”

“I’m, uh, looking forward to it?” Zuko accepts a bowl from Katara. “Where are Sokka and Toph? Shouldn’t we wait for them?”

“They’re, um,” Aang takes his serving of soup without meeting Katara’s eyes, which narrow with annoyance at the mention of her brother and Toph. “Out.”

“Ugh,” Katara scoffs. The soup in her cooking pot bubbles angrily. “I can’t believe them. Zuko, you’re the only other person here with enough sense to stay out of these ridiculous scams.”

From behind her, Aang meets Zuko’s eyes. He flattens his mouth into an awkward line, then slurps loudly at his soup.

“Yeah,” Zuko agrees stiffly.

Katara freezes.

“What,” she says slowly, in a tone that pushes him six years back in time to being asked why he’s dripping with fountain water, “aren’t you telling me?”

More than a few close brushes with mortal peril have been nowhere near enough to crack Zuko’s famous stubborn streak. One stern glare from Katara has him crumbling like a sand pagoda at high tide.

“Sokka said I’m not allowed to help with the scams anymore,” he mumbles.

Katara sighs, closing her eyes tightly. She raises two fingers to rub at her temples.

“Do I want to know why?”

Aang makes a cutting motion across his throat. He shakes his head frantically. Zuko’s mouth, however, seems to open of its own accord.

“I suggested something I used to do when Uncle and I were on the run.” He can see the warning a mile away, a bright red sign in bold characters: STOP. TURN BACK. ABANDON HOPE.

When it comes to clear-sighted forethought, Zuko is metaphorically illiterate.

“And what was this scam you used to do?”

“The scam, uh, where I’d…” Zuko swallows, “point my swords at somebody and they’d give me all their money.”

Katara opens her eyes. She levels a long, ice-hard look at Zuko.

“It worked really well,” he says, adding a foot and a half to the depth of his own grave. Aang drops his head into his hands.

Katara takes a deep breath, but before she can unleash it on Zuko her eyes snap to attention over his shoulder.

“And where have you two been? Off scamming again?” she says as Toph and Sokka walk into camp, loaded down with the day’s winnings.

Zuko exhales in relief.

After the ensuing argument, he wishes Katara had yelled at him instead.

“I know this is from you, Sokka! Toph can’t write!”

Katara isn’t sure if they think she’s stupid or if they themselves are the biggest morons to ever set foot in the Fire Nation, but either way she adds Sokka and Aang to the list of people she cannot be around right now. She makes it twenty feet down the hill before someone catches up to her.

She whirls around. It’s Zuko, wearing one of those earnest expressions that are increasingly common but haven’t stopped being uncanny to see on his face.

“What?” she snaps.

“I get that you’re upset,” is how he begins, because apparently nobody ever taught him how to speak to a human being. “But—”

“Yeah, Zuko, I am upset! Gee, how’d you guess?”

“Look, yelling at Toph isn’t fixing anything. She doesn’t want to listen to you—”

“Because I’m such an overbearing mother figure. I get it. Can you all just leave me alone now?”

“You have to let her make her own mistakes.”

“You want me to just stand by and watch while she puts us all in danger? You want me to do _nothing?”_

“No, that’s not—”

“Let me tell you something right now.” She steps closer to Zuko. A mean little part of Katara that has had its run of the place since her fight with Toph gets cruel satisfaction from the way he flinches. “You don’t know any of us nearly as well as you think you do. Nothing you have to say is going to solve our problems, because we’re not a bunch of naive little kids. We’ve _all_ been through terrible things, Zuko_._ A lot of them were your fault. You’re not in charge of anyone, _especially_ not me. So if you want some advice in return, shut your mouth before all the hot air escapes, since it’s apparently the only thing you have up there!”

Katara doesn’t stick around to watch whatever kicked polar bear-puppy look blooms on his face after that.

Zuko comes stomping up the hill. A learned reflex that Aang hasn’t needed in months clocks the look on his face and insists it’s time to start flying.

“Where’s Sokka?” Zuko grunts. He sits down next to Aang like the ground has personally insulted him.

“Talking to Toph. Where were you?”

“Trying to talk to Katara.”

“Oof,” Aang says sympathetically. “I don’t think she wants to talk right now.”

“Yeah,” Zuko snaps. “I figured that one out.”

* * *

Fire Fountain City’s local jail has a wooden cell.

“Good question,” is the only answer Mai gets when she asks why anyone would bother to build something like that in a nation chock-full of people who can light things on fire with their bare hands.

Shame. It’s the least boring thing she’s run into in weeks by virtue of its sheer, baffling uselessness. Looking up its history would be more trouble than it’s worth, but she coasts on that moment of curiosity for hours.

At least it won’t be useless to her. The new blades are nice, but it’s good to have insurance.

* * *

“I’m sorry for yelling,” Katara says.

Zuko looks up, startled, and sees her face is serious and somber. The hawk chirps irritably at having its dinner and petting session interrupted. He strokes its head.

“Uh.” Zuko thinks traveling with these people has earned him more apologies than he can remember receiving before in his life. Which also happens to be a number somewhere around two. “Thank you.”

That’s what you’re supposed to say to an apology, right?

“I’ve been so frustrated lately,” she continues, “but what I said was mean and unnecessary.”

Zuko shrugs uncomfortably.

“I should have left you alone. Could have taken my own advice.”

Katara laughs quietly.

“You weren’t wrong, though. If you see Toph, could you tell her we need to talk?”

“Sure thing.” Zuko smiles. It feels easier every time he does it.

He gets a smile in return. He must be doing something right.

Then Katara doesn’t repeat the apology to Toph, but instead suggests a stupider scam than even Zuko could have thought up. He considers tearing his own hair out—but remembers, teeth clenched, to take his own advice.

* * *

“Your hawk,” Zuko says furiously, “is _bullying_ mine!”

“First of all, you can call him by his name.”

“I’m not calling him _Hawky._ It’s a stupid name.”

“Now who’s the bully? Just because you can’t think of a good name—”

“Guys,” Aang interrupts. Sokka and Zuko turn their heads in a sudden, simultaneous movement. Identical looks of embarrassment spread across their faces. “Shouldn’t Katara and Toph have been back by now?”

Embarrassment shifts to worry.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” says Sokka.

“No, you weren’t—”

“Not now, Zuko. They might need our help.” Sokka turns to the two hawks and the lemur, one of the former squawking as the latter comes to the first’s defense. “You three behave. Appa’s in charge.”

The fight is over before it begins, and Toph feels more useless than she ever has.

She doesn’t sense the girl coming; she moves by rooftop. She doesn’t know which direction Zuko’s shouted _Look out_ is meant to point her; she can’t tell that he’s looking up. She doesn’t even keep her feet on the ground; the whistling projectiles that pin her to the nearest wooden wall unroot her. Toph’s toes barely skim the ground.

_What _is_ this?_ isn’t a question she expects anyone to take the time to answer. Sokka, stand up guy that he is, does it anyway. In the midst of the sounds of the skirmish, he makes his way to her and starts yanking out the mysteriously non-metal blades stuck through her sleeves and embedded in the wall behind. She stops kicking the air in violent arcs as a small return favor.

_Bone,_ he says. _She got shuriken made of bone._ He sounds impressed. She wishes he wouldn’t.

He vanishes. Toph forgets what she says the moment each word leaves her mouth, too panicked by her helplessness and Sokka’s sudden absence to think in complete sentences. The next clear memory she has is of hands belonging to the city guard pulling her down from the wall.

* * *

Attached to this report are selected excerpts from interview transcripts taken at Fire Fountain City Guardhouse and Municipal Jail, five days after Midsummer in the Year of our Fire Lord 100 AC.

Under investigation following a violent altercation and severe damage to city property, were six young persons: Kuzon, Sapphire, Lee **[of Caldera Island]**, Lee **[of Gaipan colony]**, and two girls who declined to be identified by name.

Officer Yangsze: You’ve been identified as the wanted criminal known as the Runaway.

> The Runaway: You have no proof.

Officer Yangsze: We have this wanted poster. Look familiar?

> The Runaway: Nope. **[Transcriptionist’s note: the suspect is blind]**

Officer Yangsze: And _how_ did you get out of the wooden cell?

> The Runaway: Our friend is a firebender. Duh.

Officer Yangsze: There were no scorch marks anywhere at the scene. It was cut clean through.

> Sapphire: He’s a very good firebender.
> 
> Lee **[of Caldera]**: I’m not a firebender.
> 
> Lee **[of Gaipan]**: Do I _look_ like a—Don’t answer that. Why wouldn’t I look like a firebender? You can’t tell that kind of stuff just by looking at somebody. _[Laughter]_ But seriously, I’m not a firebender.
> 
> Kuzon: I’m not a firebender ye—Ever. Totally not a firebender, nor will I ever be one.
> 
> Sapphire: Did I say he? I meant me. I’m a firebender.

Officer Ji: You’ve been brought in for multiple counts of aggravated assault.

> Unidentified suspect: _[Silence]_

Officer Ji: Do you know of any reason she would have to attack you?

> Lee **[of Caldera]**: She’s _[Long pause]_ my ex girlfriend.
> 
> Lee **[of Gaipan]**: I _[Long pause]_ stole her girlfriend. Sometimes the ladies just can’t resist me. It’s tragic, but what can you do?
> 
> Kuzon: She _[Long pause]_ doesn’t like my dancing.
> 
> Sapphire: Nope. No idea. I can’t imagine why she would have wanted to attack us. I’ve never seen her before.
> 
> The Runaway: I stole a bunch of her stuff last time we ran into each other.

Head Guardswoman Miken: Forgery of royal documents, bribing an officer, damage to public and private property, and disturbing the peace. Young lady, do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’re in, even ignoring the assaults my associate discussed? More than any of your little friends except the blind one, I’ll tell you that.

> Unidentified suspect: _[Silence]_

Head Guardswoman Miken: You got our rookie to put them in the wooden cell so they could escape, and then what? You turned on them? Ruined your whole plan and got everyone arrested? I mean, talk me through it. I’m just trying to understand why you’d do any of this. We’ve got you all dead to rights and nobody’s firebending their way out of these cells. There’s no reason to be stubborn.

> Unidentified suspect: _[Silence]_

Head Guardswoman Miken: Oh sure, sit there all stoic like it’ll do you any good. We sent a hawk to the palace, you know that? The princess isn’t going to be thrilled about some moody teenager using her name to pull a fast one on the bumbling local guard and cheat them out of their money. We’re good, hardworking citizens in this city. We built the Fire Fountain to honor the Fire Lord. We take the royal family very seriously here. You’re in more trouble than you can possibly imagine. Say something!

> Unidentified subject: I thought this was an interrogation. If I wanted a lecture, I’d talk to my mother.

Head Guardswoman Miken: Ah, she can speak.

> Unidentified subject: When you have something interesting to say, sure. I’ll talk.

Head Guardswoman Miken: Strike that from the record.

**[Compiler’s note: it was not struck from the record]**

Officer Yangsze: Who are your parents? We’ll need to contact them so they can pick you up.

> Kuzon: My parents?
> 
> Lee **[of Gaipan]**: My parents are dead. They died so tragically. Don’t even ask how, it’s too sad to talk about. I was utterly alone until I fell in with this ragtag bunch of young criminals, but deep down I yearn for a better life.
> 
> Sapphire: Lee is my brother. Our parents are _[Long pause]_ fighting in the war!
> 
> Kuzon: Of course I have parents!
> 
> Lee **[of Gaipan]**: Oh, she said I was her brother? She must have meant the other Lee.
> 
> Lee **[of Caldera]**: How did you know I have a sister?
> 
> Kuzon: My parents are named Wang Fire and Sapphire.

Officer Yangsze: Any relation to the Sapphire we have in custody?

> Kuzon: She’s named after her. That’s my sister.
> 
> Lee **[of Caldera]**: Oh. Yes. That is absolutely my sister.

Officer Yangsze: Why were you traveling together without your parents?

> Lee **[of Caldera]**: We were part of a traveling circus.

Officer Yangsze: And what did you do in this circus?

> Lee **[of Caldera]**: I did not juggle.
> 
> The Runaway: [Silence]

Report Appendix One:

Incident Report Five-Seven-Five: Five escapes from Fire Fountain Guardhouse and Municipal Jail, five hours past sunset, five days past Midsummer, the year of our Fire Lord 100 AC.

Written by: Night Watchman Goru

> Suspects detained in separate cells. Special attention paid to the firebender, Sapphire: hands bound, per standard procedure. Between normal rounds, as due diligence was completed by Night Watchman on duty to the utmost expectation, bars on each cell were pried apart enough to escape. Cuffs binding Sapphire also broken and left behind. Metal door was severely dented and removed from hinges. No sign of escapees in immediate vicinity of Guardhouse. Night Watchman on duty prioritized security of other prisoners over pursuit, as is standard and outlined in Guard Handbook.

Addendum by: Head Guardswoman Miken

> Goru fell asleep.

Report Appendix Two:

Incident Report Five-Seven-Six: One escape from Fire Fountain Guardhouse and Municipal Jail, six hours past sunset, five days past Midsummer, the year of our Fire Lord 100 AC.

Written by: Night Watchman Goru

> All weapons confiscated from suspect at intake. Suspect was belligerent but force was not necessary. During security check after Incident Five-Seven-Five, Night Watchman on duty found cell empty and door ajar. Bars were undamaged, unlike other escapes. Fragments of carved bone found in cell lock, possibly from a hairpin.

Addendum by: Head Guardswoman Miken

> Fire Goru.

This report was compiled by Xiaojing, Notary Public and Local Administrator to Northern Chung-Ling, at the request of the Fire Lord.

* * *

The swords weren’t enough. Toph is ready to admit that now.

“Hi, Zuko,” she says, as soon as they land and camp is made and she and Katara have appropriated Sokka’s hawk and everyone else is hard and fast asleep. For once, she appreciates how little Zuko sleeps—his restlessness is usually annoying. Right now, it’s for the best.

“Hi,” he grunts.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry. For what I said to you, before.”

His silence stretches so long Toph uses the time to start thinking of other potential apology gifts. What do you get the firebender who has—had, and then lost—everything? Or would a friendly sparring session work better? He seems like the kind of guy who would bond through mutual butt-kicking.

“It’s okay.” His voice, low and quiet, nearly shocks her.

“No, it’s not,” Toph insists. “I know you really miss your mom, and—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

Toph turns away. She holds her hands out, ready to pull up the walls of her earth tent and give Zuko some privacy.

“I didn’t realize I was so obvious,” he says.

Toph waits, listens.

“About my mother,” Zuko continues. “Nobody would talk about her, after—It was like she never existed. Like I wasn’t even allowed to feel sad. So when you threw it in my face like that—”

He crosses his arms over his knees and buries his face in them. He isn’t crying, Toph doesn’t think. Maybe he just needs to sit in the dark for a minute. Be as alone as he can be.

“I’m sorry,” Toph says again.

“It’s okay. Really. Now that you’ve said that.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s okay now.”

“If you want to talk about her,” Toph offers.

“I don’t.” It comes out harsh. He seems to hear himself; his voice softens. “But thank you.”

“No problem.” Toph turns around, punches Zuko in the arm, and bends her tent for the night.

She can sense him rubbing his bicep, face turned toward the wall of earth separating them. Toph smiles to herself—he’ll figure out affection one of these days.

* * *

_Dearest Ty Lee,_

_I trust the road is treating you well._

_Did you hear about the incident at Fire Fountain City? I’ve just received the news. Someone used my royal seal to manipulate the local guard. Shameful. As you know, I only trust my closest friends to carry such a thing._

_Alas, the culprit got away. I wonder where she’s gone. Look into it for me, will you? I’m certain it won’t take you out of your way._

_Give my warmest regards to Mai when you meet with her. I expect only good news from the two of you soon._

_Your friend,_

_Azula, daughter of Fire Lord Ozai, Princess of the Fire Nation and Heir to the Throne._

* * *

Zuko hasn’t heard a ghost story in years.

Oh, he’s heard Uncle’s spirit stories, certainly. He’s heard tales of souls lost in endless fog, of spirits that steal faces and wear them like theatre masks, of humans sublimated into something other by the power of rage or love or duty. But Uncle was very specific: these were not ghost stories.

A spirit is not a ghost. It is to be respected, not pitied.

No, ghost stories were Azula’s domain. She invented a hundred wailing widows and bloody boatmen when they were children, all of them furious and horrible and every single one coming for Zuko as he slept. She would tell her tales in the flickering light of a flame held in her hand. It shifted and danced in her golden eyes and changed her face like rolling clouds: one moment, she was the terrified victim; the next, the monster.

Sokka has a similar flair for the dramatic, though none of the subtlety.

Katara, on the other hand, tells her mother’s story with chilling seriousness. The fire on her face sets the tone. The twisting branches of the trees cry in the wind and grasp at the sky. Zuko finds his heart in his throat with a fear he has not felt for something that cannot touch him in a long time.

Toph has a unique style of storytelling. Less is more.

It might be a good thing after all that his firebending has fled. The memory of being a scared little boy could have brought with it the lack of control he had at the time, and reflexively firebending at the kind old woman who finds them in the woods would not be a promising start to this leg of their journey.

_Spiced tea and warm beds,_ she offers them. Zuko could collapse with gratitude.

This is practically the life of luxury: sleeping in a real _bed._ Inside a building, no less.

A building that is drafty and creaks as if about to collapse, true, but nicer than the Lower Ring apartment. Nicer than sleeping on streets and in shrubland and—actually, not much better than dozing off on the warm pelts lining the saddle of a flying bison, open to the starry night, wind in his hair, chill abated by the proximity of other tired bodies.

Time was, to accept the kindness of strangers was to spit on the only things he had left: pride, self-sufficiency, the dignity of his ancestors. These days, all three are exposed as flimsy, shallow excuses for honor. The first is shame, the second is self-sabotage, and the third is violence.

Worthy to be spit on, if you ask him.

Kindness is still hard to swallow. This is another skill that takes practice. The death of pride brings the question of desert.

_Do I deserve this?_

Were it not for the kindness of strangers, he would be dead twice over. That is not counting meals bought with begged-for coin. The man who made Uncle earn his dinner turned charity to cruelty. He, certainly, got what he deserved.

_Ought it to be earned?_

The realization hits like a rock to the chest: he has performed acts of kindness. Saving a falling crewman in a storm; vowing to rescue a poor woman’s son, the only member of her family left in her care. The word feels ill-fitting attached to himself. These acts were not gentle. They were rarely rewarded and never easy, nor met with gentleness in return.

_What can I give in return that will ever equal its value?_

He thinks transactionally: a slight begets a punishment. A reward, begotten by an honorable act. Never effect without cause. Never luxury without someone else’s broken back to make it possible.

Luxury is relative. Perhaps the word will never truly mean anything to him ever again.

Everything feels slow and profound in the space between thought and dream. Ideas tangle themselves in tighter knots until no single thread is distinguishable. The night fades into sleep.

* * *

In the morning, Zuko carries groceries and Aang resolves to solve the town’s spirit problem.

“You sure it’s a good idea to go chasing after something like that?” Zuko asks. “Uncle always said spirits weren’t to be trifled with.”

“Pssht,” Sokka scoffs. “He goes head-to-head with spirit monsters like, all the time.”

Zuko glances, askance, at the Avatar who barely comes up to his chin.

“I _am_ the Great Bridge,” he shrugs.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Sokka claps Aang on the shoulder. He looks over toward his sister and Hama, then scurries ahead to spend several of his finite number of moments on this earth interrogating an old innkeeper.

“Besides,” Aang murmurs so only Zuko—and probably Toph, just his luck—can hear, “I had to leave the tsungi horn behind when we broke out of jail, so I don’t have anything better to do.”

Zuko rolls his eyes.

“That’s too bad. You could use the practice.”

“I was getting better!” he huffs.

Zuko doesn’t reply.

Back at the inn, Sokka continues to be suspicious and his stealth skills leave much to be desired. Zuko agrees with Katara on this one; puppetry is a perfectly normal hobby. So is having locked doors when one makes a living by inviting complete strangers into her house. That doesn’t mean he stops either of the group’s resident lock-pickers, though.

All in all, it’s a quiet day—one that ends with a hearty meal and another chilling story straight from the Southern Water Tribe.

His stewed ocean kumquats go unfinished.

The beds in Hama’s inn are old and creaky, but Zuko slept as well as he ever does the night before; now, he tosses and turns. The thought of iron cages fills his mind. Of imprisonment. Of being torn away from his bending.

He circles his wrist in the dark room, but no flame comes.

Hama must be filled with incredible wisdom and strength to survive as she has. Zuko knows the struggle of survival. This woman, though carrying grief, has built a life here. She has welcomed others. She has found peace in doing so.

He cannot imagine such a peace. He came near to it, once. The Jasmine Dragon shines like polished marble in his memory, but his time there was as fleeting as the brief clear days in the middle of monsoon season. He wants to know how to keep something like that without breaking it. He wants what Hama has.

At the very least, he wants her to know that he understands.

When he finally sleeps in fits and starts, fragments of a dream cut through his mind.

_“We’re taking the prisoners home.”_

_Uncle is gone. He did not change his mind. Zuko walks onto the ship alone._

_Azula locks him away and laughs._

_His father towers over him._

_“Welcome home.”_

He rises early: not quite with the sun, but not far behind it.

Zuko pads down the old staircase with the lightest feet he can muster. Stealth is one of very few things he has ever prided himself on. Hama stands in her kitchen with her back to Zuko, humming quietly. Dishes clink together.

“If you’re looking for breakfast,” she says, “you’ll have to wait. I’m not as spry in the mornings as I once was.”

The hair on the back of his neck stands up. This is the first time in years someone has noticed him while he is trying to be silent—apart from Toph, who uses her bending to feel him coming. Zuko supposes Hama could probably do the same, if he were standing in a pool of water.

He shakes away the unsettled feeling and takes the last few stairs down to the ground floor. Crossing the threshold to the kitchen feels invasive, although he has been welcomed there already. Though he has been sleeping in this woman’s home.

“That’s not what I wanted.”

Hama turns around to look at him.

“Oh? Then what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to say, about what you told us last night,” Zuko’s words catch in his throat under Hama’s gaze. “I understand why you never went home again. I get it.”

The soft, layered lines of her face fall into a thoughtful smile. She reaches out a thin hand and lays dry fingers against his scar. Like a startled prey animal, Zuko stops breathing.

This is the first time anyone has touched his scar in three years. He remembers the last vividly: shouting Uncle out of his quarters, insisting he could change his own bandages. The depth and focus in Hama’s eyes reminds him of Katara that night at the hot spring, when she healed the hawk and told him about her mother.

“Sweet boy,” Hama says in her low, gentle voice. “I don’t think you do, but you could.”

Zuko closes his eyes in humility, a motion of respect to an elder and a master.

Her hand drifts from his cheek to his chin. She curls fingers under it and tilts his head up a fraction of an inch. Zuko opens his eyes to meet hers: light and grey, but something in them like a bottomless hole in sea ice.

“Yes,” Hama says slowly. “Yes, very soon. You will understand when the time comes, and you will do what needs to be done.”

He wants to beg and plead with her to explain. She sees something in him, perhaps something that looks like destiny. He used to think he was above Uncle’s proverbs and cryptic advice, but now he craves them—hearing her speak is alike enough to make him ache.

Yet he can’t find it in himself to ask. It’s as if his entire body is frozen in the grip of this moment, this certainty from another person that Zuko will know how to do the right thing. His track record is spotty at best in that area; her faith in him burns like the inner fire he can no longer control.

“Well,” Hama releases him and claps her hands together. The moment of stillness shatters. “Let’s get a pot of tea on, before your friends wake up.”

“I can help,” Zuko says eagerly. “With the tea. I used to work in a tea shop.”

“Really? In that case, you’ll be my special new assistant. Have you ever made it spiced, the way they do it here in the Fire Nation?”

“No,” Zuko says honestly. “I lived in Ba Sing Se.”

“I see. Beautiful city, I’m told. I’m so sorry for what has happened to it.” Her eyes trail over his scar again, full of understanding but none of the pity that crawls down his spine when most people stare that way.

“Yeah,” Zuko agrees. He hangs his head, eyes focused on the spark rocks and tinder that lie on the kitchen counter, awaiting a flame. “Me too.”

A teapot is shoved into his chest by strong, wiry arms. Hama is clearly uninterested in dragging out the silence of grief, which has Zuko breathing a relieved sigh.

She shows him how to make tea the way he grew up drinking it. It’s a backwards, mismatched education: he learned to brew like an Earth Kingdom citizen from the Dragon of the West, and now learns the preferred Fire Nation style from the second-to-last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe.

Uncle would have something to say about it. He doesn’t know what. Zuko makes a note to tell him when they see each other again, no matter how far away that day is.

Katara’s stomach is a bubbling pot of excitement.

“I’m going to learn from a real master from our tribe,” she says, aware that it’s the third time she’s repeated it this morning.

“And we’re going to track down a spirit that will probably try to kill us,” Sokka yawns, half sprawled over the kitchen table. “A big day for everyone.”

“You don’t know that it’ll try to _kill_ us,” Aang objects.

“Yeah,” says Toph, “maybe it’ll just drag us into the Spirit World.”

“Not _again,”_ Sokka groans.

Katara frowns. None of them understand what this means for her, what it means to finally have an unbroken connection to her heritage. To learn from a woman who has faced the very violence that took her mother and come out the other side is an honor.

Or nearly none of them. Aang smiles encouragingly, in understanding, when Hama returns to ask if Katara is ready to go. He has more than his own fair share of pain from this war. It’s different, his severed connection with the other airbenders, but not completely. She’ll want to tell him everything later. She knows he’ll want to hear it.

And maybe he’s not alone either. Zuko meets her eyes on the way out the door and nods. Hama smiles at Zuko; Katara follows suit.

The last Southern waterbender, her new master, and her family. Like the fractals of growing ice, something inside Katara feels a little closer to whole than it has been in a long, long time.

* * *

“Hi, Mai!”

Mai’s dark eyes go wide in her usually-blank face. Her aura is greyer than usual, and that’s saying something.

“What are you doing here?”

Ty Lee is used to Mai’s bluntness. She doesn’t like small talk or meaningless greetings or talking to other people, really. While it’s hard to relate to or see past sometimes, Ty Lee is nothing if not persistent. She knows Mai loves her.

Plus, if Ty Lee squints, she can see the humor of it. _What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?_ is probably how she meant to say it. And it’s true: the building in front of them is full of shouting and music that sounds nothing like the crisp perfection of the fancy parties Ty Lee had to attend as a kid _or_ the merry harmony of the circus. A man lets out a loud curse and the sound of breaking glass cuts through the noise.

Mai spares the cacophony a brief, uninterested glance, then returns her gaze to Ty Lee. Maybe it’s a trick of the smoke-filled evening, but her aura seems to get a shade darker.

She thought Mai would be happy to see her.

“Looking for you, silly!” she says. Mai doesn’t crack a smile.

“How did you find me?”

“Uh, you got arrested?” Ty Lee tilts her head. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. What does Azula want?”

“She’s worried you ran into trouble. I’m here to help make sure it doesn’t happen again!” She laughs. “Pretty funny, huh? _Me_ keeping _you_ out of trouble.”

“Right. Funny.” Mai turns around and starts walking. Ty Lee rushes to catch up; Mai’s legs are longer, and while she’s always found games like footraces boring, she can really move when she wants to.

“Where are we going?” Ty Lee asks.

“To find Zuko.”

“I _know_ that.” She shakes her head. Mai is so funny, but she forgets that it’s not always time for jokes. “That’s why Azula sent us out here in the first place.”

Mai grunts noncommittally.

“Hey,” Ty Lee chirps as they walk down the forest path, away from the light and sound of the tavern behind them, “at least we’re in the Fire Nation this time! I know you didn’t like the Earth Kingdom.”

“I was sick of not wearing my own clothes,” she says.

“I understand. You’ve always had such a unique style—Oooh! Is this _yours?”_ Ty Lee squeals in delight at the _cutest_ eelhound she’s ever seen.

“Yes.” Mai grabs the saddle and swings on. “But there’s only one seat.”

“No problem.” Ty Lee cartwheels up the eelhound’s tail and perches on her toes on the back edge of the saddle.

Mai sighs. She snaps the reins and the eelhound takes off into the sunset.

Ty Lee decides, then and there, to make it her personal mission to lighten Mai’s aura. As soon as they do what Azula asked her to, of course.

* * *

“At least Katara is getting somewhere,” Toph mutters into her basket of dumplings. “We haven’t found out squat about this spirit.”

“Hey, we got a lead on Old Man Ding!” says Aang. “As soon as we’re done eating, we’ll talk to him and get this whole situation straightened out.”

“Yeah,” Sokka says, talking with his mouth full with characteristic charm. “Plus, I’m not exactly jealous of Katara hanging out with a creepy old lady all day.”

“How could you _say that?”_ Zuko shouts. Several heads passing by their picnic spot turn at the outburst. He glowers, and lowers his voice. “She’s the last of the Southern waterbenders before Katara. She survived years of imprisonment by the Fire Nation, and now she’s teaching your sister about the heritage that was _stolen_ from your people! She’s a hero, Sokka.”

Everyone stares—except Toph, who sets her dumplings down.

“What?” Zuko barks.

“Nothing.” Aang blinks. “I think you’re right. I just… wasn’t expecting that.”

“We’ve finally rehabilitated a feral firebender,” Sokka sighs happily. “Score one for Team Avatar.”

Zuko scowls, then angrily swallows a dumpling.

Ding meant to board up his windows weeks ago.

He’s had a full month to prepare, after all, but sometimes you realize you haven’t swept the kitchen in far too long, and you might as well do the rest of the house while you’re at it, and then your niece writes to invite you to her wedding on Ember Island and you have to write to your sister and tell her to talk some sense into her daughter because _nobody_ should have a spring wedding on _Ember Island_, what, is Hing Wa not good enough for her? and then you go grocery shopping but there aren’t any ash bananas so you have to go back again later, and one thing leads to another and before you know it the full moon is rising and the boards for your window are still lying on the ground.

And then a bunch of kids come knocking and calling you old and you dagnab near break your thumb. They help you with the boards, though, so you decide not to go ‘round telling on them to their parents this time.

Then, if you’re Ding, you realize you didn’t recognize any of the kids, so you wouldn’t know whose parents to tell anyway.

“Hm,” Ding mutters to himself, standing in his doorway. The full moon peeks out from behind the mountain like the eye of a massive dragon. “Maybe I shouldn’t have sent a bunch of teenagers to the haunted mountain. Oh, well.”

He shuts the door.

“I can’t see anything down there,” Sokka says at the mouth of the cave.

“That’s why we have Zuko.” Toph turns to him expectantly, gesturing the cue for a little firebending action.

Sparky’s heartbeat, already weird and kind of worrying on a good day, goes ballistic.

“Uh,” he says. “If there’s something down there, fire could draw attention to us.”

It’s not a lie, but it’s close enough. The guy is worse at lying than Katara. Still, they don’t have time to unpack his panic at the idea of firebending in a cave, and the excuse seems to satisfy Sokka and Aang.

“In that case,” Toph says, “that’s why you have me. Let’s go.”

_“Hama.”_ Sokka growls the old woman’s name between his teeth.

“No—” Zuko says, before he’s cut off by the affirmation of the prisoners.

“I _knew_ there was something creepy about her.”

“We have to stop Hama!” Aang adds, a little unnecessarily, but Toph respects the initiative.

“The two of us will get these people out of here,” Toph says to Sokka and Aang, hoping a slack-jawed Zuko is mentally and emotionally present enough to hear her. “You go.”

She grabs the chain of a nearby set of cuffs and bends another key as the two take off. Zuko catches it cleanly when she throws it to him, despite how Toph can feel the tension in his body so tight he shakes with it.

The newly-freed prisoners set about taking care of one another, checking for injuries. Their quiet chatter bounces off the stone walls.

“So, what was that about?” Toph murmurs as she and Zuko work on a pair of prisoners chained up next to one another. “Back at the cave entrance.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zuko lies.

“Nobody’s going to get mad at you for firebending, you know.” A grateful woman’s cuffs unlock and Toph moves onto the next. Beside her, Zuko does the same. “I get that you’re probably worried, but we’re not afraid of you anymore.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what—”

“That’s the last of them,” Zuko says loudly as if Toph hadn’t spoken a word. “We need to get out of here.”

She can appreciate the urgency of the moment, and she’s a patient person. After all, it seems like something that’ll be important later. If it’s important, Toph will find out.

* * *

She doesn’t have long to wait.

It’s a late night of flying before they finally make camp. None of them were eager to stick around the creepy village, even with Hama locked away. Despite the hour, no one is asleep.

Katara hasn’t said a word since they landed. She’s huddled by the campfire, Sokka’s arm around one shoulder and Aang’s around the other. Despite the warmth, Toph can feel the shivers that run through her. The quiet rhythm of her brother’s voice seems to be the only thing keeping Katara’s heartbeat in check.

Toph wraps her arms around her own knees. She’ll let the boys handle this one; she has a lot to learn in the _comforting others_ department.

So, it seems, does Zuko.

He leaps down from Appa’s saddle and sticks a clean landing.

“What were you up to?” she mumbles.

“Feeding the hawk.” Zuko sits beside her, leaning into Appa’s soft fur.

“That’s nice.”

The fire crackles. Sokka murmurs soothingly. The wind blows high in the trees.

“I’ve lost my stuff,” Zuko says out of nowhere.

“Seriously? You want to do this _now?”_ Toph puts up her hands in a sarcastic show of innocence. “I didn’t touch your stuff.”

“I meant my firebending,” he says, so low even Toph can barely hear him. “It’s gone.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I think—” He stops.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, wait.” Toph grabs Zuko’s arm as he tries to stand up and pulls him back down. Appa grumbles in his sleep, not happy about stubbing his toe on a firebender. “What do you think made you lose your bending?”

“Not so loud,” Zuko hisses.

“I’m not going to tell them. Katara has enough to worry about right now.”

“Okay.” He takes a deep, steady breath. “I think it’s because of Aang. Because he’s alive.”

“You lost your firebending because he didn’t die?”

“For so long, hunting him was my drive. My purpose. I—I’m sort of an angry person.”

“Really? I didn’t notice,” Toph says dryly. Zuko tilts his head toward her, but if he’s glaring she can’t tell. Hopefully he’ll get a handle on the whole _blind_ thing soon.

“Anyway,” he says pointedly and oh, yep, there’s a glare in that tone, “most firebending is drawn from strong emotion. Especially after I got banished, my strongest emotion was rage. When I thought the Avatar was dead, I was so angry at—Well.”

“Everybody, yeah.” Toph remembers his breakdown by the campfire, way back when.

“Yeah.”

“But he’s alive.” Toph follows the logic. “And now you don’t have anywhere to put your anger.”

“I don’t know if I want to put it anywhere,” he says slowly, like he’s still puzzling it out himself. “It’s… easy. To be angry. But I don’t think it’s right.”

“Then you need to draw your firebending from a different source. Want a recommendation?”

“Uh, sure.”

“The original source. The first earthbenders were the badgermoles. That’s where I learned. Who were the first firebenders?”

“That doesn’t help me,” Zuko growls. He hunches down into himself.

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t,” he snaps.

Normally, Toph might push. She knows a thing or two about bending in new ways when the old ones don’t cut it. Tonight, though, they’re all a little raw. She isn’t going to needle Zuko while Katara is dealing with whatever it was, exactly, that Hama did to her. That she did to Hama.

First off, he has a habit of getting loud. Second, Aang’s too busy to play peacekeeper, and he shouldn’t have to.

“Maybe,” Toph says, “we could try and find you something worth getting angry about.”

“Maybe,” Zuko mumbles, but Toph gets the feeling he doesn’t have the energy to explore every righteous injustice in the world right now. That’s more Katara’s area, anyway.

“You said _most_ firebending comes from emotion,” Toph recalls. “When doesn’t it?”

“Huh?” Zuko lifts his head at the change of subject. “Why do you care?”

“I’m curious. My earthbending doesn’t come _from_ anywhere. It’s an extension of who I am and how I interact with the world. It seems like firebending is different, and I want to know how.”

“My uncle told me,” he says, “that lightning comes from a lack of emotion. The cold separation of energy. Complete detachment. That’s why I couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

“What?”

“That you care so much. I’ve been figuring that one out, too. Things, and places,” Katara has fallen asleep, slumped against Sokka’s shoulder; Aang leans, snoring, on Katara’s, “and people, they make you feel something. That’s not a weakness. It’s a strength.”

Zuko is quiet for a few seconds.

“You got wise when I wasn’t looking.”

Toph socks him in the shoulder.

“I can’t take all the credit.” She smiles. “I once had a long conversation over some very good tea.”

Zuko chuckles.

“I hear that’s been known to happen.”

Appa’s breathing shifts them both gently. Sokka’s voice fades into sleepy mumbling. The wind slows to a distant rustling in the trees.

* * *

There are bars like the one she nearly walked into in every city in the Fire Nation. Probably the world. There are people like the man she was looking for in any of them, if her uncle’s stories are to be believed. People who will take her money, do their job competently, and not ask questions.

If Mai could only get five minutes to herself.

“I spy with my little eye, something… blue!”

“Don’t tell me,” Mai says. “The sky.”

Ty Lee laughs. It’s a twirling, twinkling, shining sound, like a blown glass bauble hung up on a string in sunlight.

“Your turn.”

Mai sighs.

“I spy with my little eye, something red.”

“Oh! Good one!” Ty Lee peers around Mai’s shoulder. She can feel the shift of her weight behind, twisting with grace and no trace of the fear of falling. “The fire lilies!”

“Yep.” The eelhound lopes over a dip in the side of the road. The saddle jostles Mai; Ty Lee bounces with the movement.

“So,” Ty Lee says. “What leads do you have so far?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe it,” she scoffs. “You’re way too smart. Why were you using Azula’s seal in Fire Fountain City if you didn’t have a lead?”

“I thought I did.” Mai tightens her grip on the reins, overcome momentarily with the memory of Zuko staring through the bars of her cell while his friends urged him to run, to leave her behind. Zuko, looking away. Zuko, leaving. She forces her hands to relax. “I was wrong.”

“Well, we’re going to find one! I mean, it can’t be too hard now that there’s two of us. Subtlety was never Zuko’s strong suit, I don’t think. But maybe he’s changed a lot since we were kids. I bet he’s taller now—”

“It’s your turn.”

“I _knew_ you wanted to play!” Ty Lee giggles again. All else aside, it’s nice to hear. “I spy with my little eye, something green.”

“That tree.”

“Nope!”

“_That_ tree.”

“You got it! Wow, you’re great at this game.”

“Thanks.”

“Your turn!”

“I spy with my little eye—” Mai’s voice dies in her throat. The sky is nearly cloudless, but from the corner of her eye she spots movement, far above, practically hidden in the corona around the sun… “Something white.”

“Anybody want to play a game?” Aang asks.

“No,” Zuko responds, lying flat on his back.

“How about ‘I spy’?” suggests Katara.

“Great idea, Katara!” Toph chirps. “I’ll go first.”

She takes a breath as if about to speak, then shuts her mouth.

“You’ve made your point,” Katara says flatly.

“How about a song?” Aang asks. “Do you guys know ‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Zebu-Yak Milk on the Wall’?”

“No,” Zuko repeats.

“I can teach you!” Aang offers.

Zuko sits up. The glare he levels at Aang could burn down a forest in a minute flat.

“Or not,” Aang chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck.

“We could play twenty questions!” Sokka calls from his place on Appa’s head. “Try to guess what I’m thinking of.”

“No,” Zuko says.

“That’s not a yes or no question,” Sokka sing-songs.

“Is it an animal?” asks Aang.

“Yes, technically.”

“Is it real?” asks Toph.

“Yes.”

“Can you ride on its back?” asks Aang.

Sokka makes a sound like he’s accidentally swallowed a bug.

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Is it bigger than a badger-mole?”

“No.”

“Is it friendly?” asks Katara.

“Not at the moment.”

“I got it!” Toph exclaims. “Is it Zuko?”

“Hey!” Zuko objects.

“Great work, Toph!” Sokka laughs. Less than a second later, a ripe mango hits Sokka in the back of the head and goes tumbling away into thin air.

“Don’t be mean,” Katara huffs, though which of them she’s addressing is unclear to everyone.

“Yeah, Zuko—”

_“Me?”_

“—now we have to stop for supplies again. At least we’re coming up on a town.”

“You said we had to stop for supplies anyway—” Zuko begins.

Katara lays a hand on his shoulder. When he meets her eyes, she gives a little shake of her head.

“Sometimes it’s easier to just give him a win,” she whispers loudly. Aang snickers.

Zuko scowls, but he doesn’t press the issue.

They land half a mile from a sleepy village on the wide island. They’ve reached the central landmass of the Fire Nation. Distance from the Caldera leaves swathes of its land to wild growth interrupted by farming towns nestled in valleys that mark the lines where disparate islands long ago melded together.

Sokka slings his sword over one shoulder and a bag with their grocery budget over the other. Zuko sheathes his colorful blades. Katara leaves her waterskin behind.

“What do you think?” Sokka muses, leaning over the wares at a fruit stand with its baskets organized by color. “If we get more mangos, will you keep throwing them at me?”

“Probably,” Zuko replies.

Aang weighs two pouches of fire flakes in his hands.

“Does the swishing mean it’s ripe?” Katara asks, shaking a melon by her ear.

“Who told you that?” asks Toph.

Down the street, past the metalsmith next door to the apothecary next door to the healer, the latter two locked in a decade-long feud and each far too stubborn to move shop, Mai glances around in utter boredom as Ty Lee chats happily with a woman who makes jewelry from sea glass.

“Aren’t these earrings _beautiful,_ Mai?” Ty Lee holds two glimmering pieces up to her ears.

“They’re really… green,” she says.

Ty Lee pouts. Over her shoulder, a boy at the fruit stand up the block wanders away from his friend. He has a pair of swords on his back, a short topknot, and the edge of a scar peeking over the ridge of his nose—

Mai’s fist clenches. Her eyes pull away from Zuko and back to Ty Lee, who digs through the jewelry-seller’s offerings to try and find something “suitably depressing” that Mai might like.

“I think the post office is back that way.” Mai points stiffly behind herself. “You should go.”

“Why?” Ty Lee tilts her head. “We have all morning. If there’s a letter from Azula waiting for us there, I want to have a present to send back with our reply!”

“You really think she wants earrings made of beach trash?”

The woman running the stall shoots her a furious look.

“But they’re so pretty.” Ty Lee gives the earrings a last, forlorn stare.

“You can look for a present that way.” Mai points behind herself again. “I’ll go up the street.”

“Why wouldn’t we just go together? You said the post office is down there.”

“It is.” Mai stares in wide-eyed silence like a mongoose lizard.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she snaps. “Let’s just go.” She turns around in a whirlwind of black robes and stalks along the row of storefronts.

Ty Lee exchanges a confused glance with the jewelry maker. She shrugs, then follows after her friend.

Back up at the fruit stand, Sokka declares their restocking mission a success.

“We’re making great time,” he says happily as they stroll down the road out of town. “No spirit mysteries or people attacking us for once!”

“Don’t jinx it,” Katara warns.

“Pshaw,” Sokka scoffs. “Don’t be so superstitious.”

Leaning crankily against a counter inside a building covered in birds and everything they leave behind, Mai sees the crowd of traitor children walk past the open door without a care in the world.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she declares way too loudly in the nearly-empty post office.

“They probably,” Ty Lee says, “have one here—Oh, she’s already gone.”

She shrugs off Mai’s behavior and, smiling, steps up to the clerk, who hands her a roll of paper stamped with the royal seal.

Outside, Mai walks as casually as she can along the village’s thoroughfare. The Water Tribe boy’s crooked topknot makes him easy to spot up ahead. Soon, the group veers off the road and into the forest.

Mai catches a hand around the branch of a tree and disappears into the leaves.

“All I’m saying,” explains Toph, “is that there should be books you can listen to.”

“I’ve offered to read to you,” Katara says indignantly.

“No offense, Katara, but you’re not a very good actress.”

Katara makes an affronted noise.

“You mean like a play?” asks Zuko.

“Sort of,” Toph hedges. “But plays usually expect you to see what’s going on. Maybe if there was somebody there to describe the action in between words.”

“I could try,” Aang offers, “if we ever get the chance to see a play together.”

“Thanks, Twinkle-Toes,” Toph says, “but you’re not always Mister Clear and Concise Sentence Structure.”

“I could be!”

“A day at the theater,” Sokka muses. “It would be nice to have free time for stuff like that.”

“I haven’t seen a play in years,” Zuko says with a level of moroseness even he rarely achieves.

Before anyone can comment on how utterly aggrieved Zuko sounds by his theatrical deprivation, a series of familiar carved-bone knives pin Toph, Aang, and Katara to three separate tree trunks.

“Oh, come on!” Sokka whines.

“She’s in the trees,” Zuko says, already halfway up the nearest one. Sokka scrambles to follow.

Below, Toph kicks the trunk behind her with a fury that shakes the entire tree. Katara and Aang tug at the shuriken holding them down.

Above, Zuko gives Sokka a hand up onto a wide branch. Across a short span of empty air, Mai balances on another limb.

Sokka draws his sword. Zuko draws his two. Mai drops something wickedly sharp into her hand. The three hold, wondering who will make the first move.

A star of bone spins toward Sokka. He swings his sword with precision, but his feet have less of it; one heel slips off the edge of the tree branch. Zuko sees him start to fall, stabs one sword into the trunk of the tree, and reaches out a hand to catch him. He closes his fingers around Sokka’s wrist, but another shuriken whistles through the air straight toward where they’re joined.

Sokka rolls, wrenching his arm from Zuko’s grip to save them both the loss of a hand, and tips off the branch with a cry.

“Sokka!” Zuko shouts.

The black-bladed sword swings wildly, trying to find purchase against a limb or a trunk. Sokka doesn’t succeed in jabbing it into anything. He lands hard on his back, draped upside down on another tree branch several feet below. There is the quick sound of projectiles, and he’s pinned where he lies.

From the ground, Katara’s voice echoes with fear: “What’s going on? Hang on, we’re coming!” followed by desperate grunts as she pulls against the bone binding her and her friends to the trees.

“No boomerang today?” Zuko calls down. He glances from his sword stuck in the tree to Mai, readying another weapon.

“No,” Sokka says between his teeth, getting to work pulling the shuriken out of his tunic.

Mai meets Zuko’s eyes. Her face is hard and unreadable. Her hand is steady. It moves in a blur too fast to focus on, shooting darts at Zuko’s feet in an attempt to knock him off the branch too.

He leaps out of the way, though barely. Scurrying sideways to avoid the flying darts is a strange, heart-in-the-throat sort of dancing.

“Zuko,” Sokka shouts.

“What? I’m a little busy.”

“You have a free hand!”

“Yeah?” He ducks another star.

“Broadswords aren’t a ranged weapon!”

“Thanks for the lesson,” he grunts, bracing himself on the tree for a half second, then diving back into his endless series of dodges and weaves.

“Just firebend at her, ice-for-brains!” Sokka punctuates the statement with a yelp as one of his legs comes free. He dangles precariously off the branch, supported by nothing but a shuriken by his calf and another by his hip.

Zuko pauses to breathe. The sounds of the forest slow; the world turns in uneven stops and starts. He curls his free hand into a fist, angles his body toward the joint of Mai’s branch and its tree, and punches.

The bout of flame that bursts from his hand would barely set tinder smouldering. It is more smoke than fire, and less of even that than anticipated.

Mai has an expression on her face that, to the keen-eyed observer, would look like the distant cousin of surprise. Sokka, on the other hand, hollers in astonishment.

“What was _that?”_

Zuko growls. He curls the failed firebending hand around the hilt of his single sword; Mai raises two daggers, crossed at either side of her face. The moment before she throws them, the branch under her feet withers like a hundred years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Before she can fall, the water from that branch consolidates in midair. It catches her like a net, slams her into the tree, and freezes.

“Katara!” Sokka cries joyfully, spotting his sister braced in the fork of a tree right below him, arms coming down from the waterbending move.

“Let’s get out of here,” Katara says.

“Can you—ah!” The fabric of Sokka’s tunic tears. He falls another inch, held above the ground only by the one shuriken in his pant leg. “Can you help me down, please?”

“There you are!” Ty Lee waves at Mai. “Sorry I took so long. I bought those earrings you hated and sent them to Azula. Don’t be mad at me,” she laughs.

“What did Azula say?”

“She hasn’t gotten them yet.”

Mai sighs so deeply she almost causes several nearby kites to snap off their strings and fly away.

“What was the letter about?”

“Oh. We’re going back to the Caldera,” she says, the closest Ty Lee ever comes to sounding sad. “The you-know-what is in a few days. She wants us back in time for the evacuation.”

“Oh. Right.”

“But!” Ty Lee perks up. “After that, we’ll get right back to our road trip together! Won’t it be fun?”

“Fun,” Mai repeats. “After the eclipse.”

“After the eclipse,” Ty Lee agrees. “Hey, by the way,” she tilts her head, “why are you all damp?”

“Issue with the bathroom,” Mai says, already walking away. “Do not ask me to elaborate.”

“Ooh,” Ty Lee wrinkles her nose in sympathy. “We’ve all been there.”

* * *

“So, the gopher-cat’s out of the bag,” Zuko grouses, two hundred feet in the air. Sokka finally makes eye contact with him. Katara, taking a turn at Appa’s reins, peeks over the edge of the saddle. Aang stops twiddling his thumbs.

“Finally,” Toph sighs, “we can talk about it.”

“You knew?” Aang exclaims.

“About Zuko’s bending? Yeah.”

“How?”

“I told her,” Zuko interrupts. “Also, I’m right here.”

“When did you lose it?” Sokka asks, leaning forward.

“Did something happen?” Katara has her healer voice on.

“How do we get it back?” Aang runs a hand through his spiky hair.

Zuko groans. It’s going to be a long flight.

Zuko is quiet after his terse explanation as to why he can’t make more than a puff of smoke anymore—quieter than usual. He pulls the ribbon out of his hair and lets it get tangled in the wind, stares hard at the sunset ahead of them.

The inelastic skin of his left side faces Aang. From dead ahead or on the right, Zuko’s face is an open book. He’s not very good at hiding his feelings. From this angle, the only clue Aang has to what’s going on in his head is the tight pressure in his jaw. It looks uncomfortable.

“Stop staring at me,” Zuko mutters. It takes Aang a moment to realize this is directed at him.

“Sorry.” Aang turns and watches the sinking sun. He shifts a few inches closer to Zuko. “It’s okay, you know. That you can’t firebend. I don’t think any less of you.”

Zuko snorts.

“I figured. It’s probably a relief for all of you.”

“No, that’s not what I—”

“Besides, I have my swords. I was always better with them anyway. You don’t have to worry about losing your bodyguard.”

“Zuko.” Aang looks at him again. Zuko doesn’t turn his head, but his eye darts toward Aang. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” He sounds genuinely confused.

“Losing your bending… I can’t imagine how hard that would be. Mine is part of who I am.” Aang spies a spare feather from Zuko’s hawk resting on the side of the saddle. He opens his palm, pulling the feather into the air, and spins it in the small eddies of a miniature whirlwind. “Airbending is one of the last connections I have to my people. I don’t know what firebending means to you, but you’re clearly not happy about it and I understand why.”

“No kidding.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed of it,” Aang insists, certain he can fix his fumbling if he just finds the right words. “And you’re not just a bodyguard, Zuko. You’re our friend.”

Aang hasn’t forgotten what happened the last time he said the word _friends_ to Zuko.

Zuko, he thinks, is remembering the same thing. When he turns toward Aang, his face is thoughtful and complicated. He closes his eyes, sighs, and opens them again.

“Do you want me to teach you firebending?”

Aang’s eyes go wider than Zuko thought physically possible.

“Oh.” He blinks. “Uh—”

“About time,” Sokka comments from his seat on the other side of the saddle. He and Aang share some inscrutable look—inscrutable to Sokka too, apparently. “What?”

“Nothing,” Aang mumbles. “Um. How are you going to do that? You know, with your bending almost gone.”

“I still know the forms,” Zuko says. “It’ll be harder, sure, but I could get you started on the basics while I figure out a way to get my fire back.”

“Right.” Aang looks frantically around the saddle. “But—But I’m still learning earthbending!”

“You weren’t any kind of master waterbender yet when _I_ started you on earth,” Toph chimes in. “Plus,” she shrugs, “you’re not bad.”

“Thanks, Toph,” Aang says flatly. “Well, there’s still the fact that—”

“You can tell him, Aang,” Katara’s voice floats up from down in front. “I don’t mind. He should probably know.”

“Tell me what?” asks Zuko. Aang sighs.

“I tried to learn firebending once before,” he says. He hangs his head in shame. “And I burned Katara.”

In the corner of Zuko’s eye, Sokka shifts uncomfortably. Katara says nothing. He doesn’t know what to do with the way they allow Aang to sit with his guilt. Silence feels like an altogether wrong response.

“Fire can be wild,” Zuko says instead. “It’s not uncommon for young firebenders to hurt others unintentionally. It can be an important lesson, but only if you take responsibility. Only if you work to do better next time.”

Aang looks up at him, nervousness and hope filling his eyes.

Zuko smiles back.

* * *

They land late, everyone ready to crawl into a bedroll or a particularly soft patch of grass and sleep like the dead.

Everyone but Zuko, apparently. He hits the ground and Toph immediately feels the nervous energy thrumming through him.

“What’s got you wound up?” she grouses.

“Okay.” Zuko takes a breath. He starts pacing back and forth. “I shouldn’t tell you this. It’s a Fire Nation secret, and if I weren’t already wanted for treason this would get me banished. Again. But it might help Aang, so.”

Aang, Sokka, and Katara lean in.

“You were worried about losing control of your fire. But firebenders… when there’s a solar eclipse, we’re totally cut off from our bending. And there’s one coming, soon.”

He pauses, either for dramatic effect or to wait for their shocked reactions. Toph is willing to bet he gets them, but not for the reason he thinks—instead because the realization sweeping over Toph is hitting everyone else at the same time.

“I thought,” Zuko continues, “I could start teaching you some firebending then. Basic tips for control. That way, you get to practice and don’t risk hurting anyone. So what do you think? Want to become a firebender in four days?”

_“Four days?”_ Aang soars three feet in the air. “The eclipse is in _four days?”_

“We don’t have to—” Zuko croaks nervously.

At this point, Toph cannot contain herself.

“You,” she shrieks at Sokka between bouts of hysterical laughter, “forgot to tell him!”

“Nuh uh!” Sokka shouts back. “It wasn’t just my decision to make!”

“Yeah,” Toph gasps, tears in her eyes, “and you forgot!”

“Let’s tell him _now_,” Katara says with a mountain of exasperation.

“Tell me what?” Zuko demands. “Why are you laughing? What didn’t you tell me?”

With a final few hiccups, Toph quiets down. Everyone turns toward Sokka.

“So.” Sokka breathes in through his nose, presses his hands together, and points his steepled fingers at Zuko. “Here’s the thing.”

* * *

The Mo Ce Sea stretches far away to the horizon, still dark and starry as the sun lightens the sky at Hakoda’s back.

“This is it,” he murmurs to Bato.

Bato claps a warm, strong hand to his shoulder.

“This is it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
Happy last fanfic update of the decade! Oh, and I almost forgot: one specific scene blatantly cannibalized from [my own tumblr post.](https://eternalgirlscout.tumblr.com/post/187912012148/people-talk-a-lot-about-how-wild-shit-would-have)


	5. Fishing for an Octopus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: canon-typical violence, child abuse, deception, emotional manipulation--basically just, Ozai is in this one, folks. Be safe!
> 
> Another note for this chapter: I would like to say, from the bottom of my heart, my bad.

“You’re going to _invade_ the Capital?” Zuko is grateful that he took the ribbon out of his hair, because it makes it that much easier to fist a hand in it and nearly tear it out of his own scalp. “By yourselves?”

“Not by ourselves.” Sokka, arms already crossed defensively, rolls his eyes. “My dad is coming with the rest of the invasion force. They’re meeting us here on the day of the eclipse.”

“He said there was a plan, but he didn’t—This is just—” Zuko paces in a wide circle.

“What? Dangerous? Stupid? Doomed to failure?”

“This is something _I _would do,” Zuko says, and does not mean it as a compliment.

Sokka scowls.

“You don’t have to come with us,” he snipes. “I get it, you didn’t sign up to be a soldier. You’ve done enough already. I would never ask you to betray your people—”

“No,” Zuko interrupts, “no, I’m coming with you.”

“Oh.” Sokka drops his arms. “Great!”

“How did you know about the eclipse, anyway?”

“We went to an underground spirit library,” Sokka yawns over breakfast, immune to the nearby sound of Aang punching a tree, “and almost got eaten by a giant owl.”

“Huh.”

They eat in silence for several seconds.

“Okay,” Zuko finally snaps, _“what?”_

* * *

The proprietor of the Jasmine Dragon prepares for his extended vacation.

“These old bones need a rest now and again,” he says jovially. “When I come back, it will be with a refreshed passion for my work and the lovely people I have the honor to serve. Too much of a good thing, after all, can spoil even the finest of pleasures.”

“You’re _too_ sweet, Mister Mushi,” Madame Wenyang giggles. “Where will you go?”

“Oh, I won’t leave the city. Ba Sing Se is my home, after all. It welcomed me so kindly. It is only right that I do it a kindness in return.”

“What do you mean?” The elaborate fan in her gray hair threatens to topple as she tilts her head.

“Nothing, nothing.” He offers a steaming pot. “More ginseng?”

“Please.”

“It’s my favorite too, you know,” he adds with a wink as he pours.

* * *

“What is Toph doing to Aang?”

“Massage, I think,” Sokka says. He swings a hammer at a dent in Appa’s new armor.

“I don’t think that’s what a massage is.” Zuko watches Aang fall flat on his back onto the ground with a grunt.

Sokka shrugs.

“He didn’t like my therapy session. Yoga with Katara didn’t help. You got any bright ideas?”

Zuko watches Aang run from a porcuchipmunk Toph brandishes at him threateningly.

“I just might.”

“What are we doing out here?” Aang asks. “I’ve tried meditating already.”

“We’re not meditating.” Zuko holds his arms by his sides, fists clenched, and stares out at the ocean. “Keep your eyes on the horizon.”

“Okay.”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Not really,” Aang says. He starts to sit down.

“Don’t. You should be as uncomfortable as possible without hurting yourself.”

“Oh.” Aang crosses his arms, uncrosses them, folds his hands behind his head, then drops them to his sides, mirroring Zuko. He shifts his bare feet against the grass. “Now what?”

“Now think about something that makes you ashamed.”

“Huh?” Aang shakes his head rapidly, like he’s trying to get water out of his ears. “Is this a chakra thing again?”

Zuko glances at him.

“What’s a chakra?”

“Never mind. Why do I need to think about shame?”

“I guess you don’t have to. That’s just what I used to do. You could think about times you’ve been in pain instead. Not the worst pain you’ve ever been in, because that might make you panic. Try the third worst.”

Aang looks at Zuko, looks at the horizon, looks at his own feet, and then looks at Zuko again.

“How is this going to make me relax?”

“It isn’t. I’m trying to help you stay awake.”

“Oh. Uh.” Aang rubs the back of his head. “Thanks. Everybody else wants me to calm down and get a good night’s rest. Do you really think staying awake is a good idea?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“You’re going to do it anyway. Nightmares are keeping you up, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Then you’re not resting even when you sleep. You have a job to do and a lot of reasons to be afraid of what might happen when you do it. I can’t fix that. But I have experience with not sleeping.”

“So you’re… teaching me insomnia?”

Zuko’s mouth twitches.

“Sort of. Now look at the horizon—right where the sky meets the water. Think about—whatever it is you’re thinking about.”

Aang opens his mouth hesitantly.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Zuko says before he can speak.

A numberless span of seconds pass. A cloud rolls toward the hazy horizon.

Eventually, Aang speaks.

“What do you think about?”

It’s Zuko’s turn to open his mouth to only find it full of silence.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Aang adds in a rush. “I mean, I’m sure it’s pretty bad, since you said it was something you were ashamed of. Not that you have a lot to be ashamed of! Only, I guess you kind of do—but it’s important to forgive yourself, and we’ve forgiven you, or at least I have. Wait, I don’t mean that anyone else is still mad at you, that came out wrong—”

“I used to think about my father.” Zuko leaves it there. The past tense is the truth, after all; he hasn’t pinned his eyes to the sky until they burned in a long time.

The air is still. Aang, for once in his last two days of training until his arms shake, is motionless and silent.

Far, far below, water crashes against the tall cliffs. Seabirds wheel in the sky. Somewhere across the island, koala-sheep graze. Zuko’s arms feel heavy and awkward. His ankles long to turn his feet forward. He wants to lock his knees. His hair is tied up just a little bit too tightly, his eyes object to the effort of focusing on the wavering horizon, and his mind pounds with the echo of obsession.

“I don’t think I like this very much,” Aang mumbles, apologetic and miserable.

“Yeah,” Zuko agrees. “Me neither.”

* * *

“It’s so disappointing you couldn’t find my brother,” Azula sighs. “One more loose end I’ll have to tie up on my own time.”

“We’re sorry, Azula,” simpers Ty Lee.

Mai restrains an earth-shattering sigh at the both of them, at all of it. Azula, pulling an _I’m not mad, I’m disappointed_ performance worthy of Mai’s mother at her best; Ty Lee, mixing worry and fear and earnest adoration with such clean seamlessness it begs the question of whether or not Ty Lee herself knows if it’s still an act. Mai, too, lying with every passing moment she keeps her mouth shut.

People don’t lie to Azula and get away with it. That’s what Azula thinks, anyway—but _getting away with it_ is a state that can only be proven with a negative. She hasn’t been caught. Yet. That is no guarantee of tomorrow, of next week, of next year. There is no statute of limitations in a friendship with Princess Azula.

“It doesn’t matter,” Azula says dismissively. “Sooner or later, he’ll come to us. I’ve always wanted the opportunity to drag Zuko to my father in chains, but if he insists on doing it himself, who am I to stop him?”

She laughs. Ty Lee laughs with her. Mai twitches the corner of her mouth, to keep up appearances.

“We’ll see you after the invasion,” Ty Lee twinkles. She gives Azula a hug and then links her arm with Mai’s.

“It’s too bad you can’t stay and watch,” Azula says.

“My mother would have a sheep-cow if I weren’t marked present at the evacuation,” Mai intones, “and I think my uncle would personally throw my father in prison. It wouldn’t be his fault, but he’s been looking for an excuse for years.”

“Your uncle the warden?” Ty Lee asks.

“I’ve always liked him,” remarks Azula. “Have a safe eclipse, girls.” She rolls her eyes.

“I’m sure it will be the dullest day of my life,” Mai replies.

That makes Azula laugh, surprisingly. She’s always had trouble recognizing when Mai is telling a joke, and been silently envious of Ty Lee for it. It took Mai a long time to figure that out. She used to assume Azula just didn’t think she was funny.

A burst of anxious guilt fills Mai’s stomach as she and Ty Lee take their leave. This always happens when Azula shows her own version of kindness. Of friendship. Of seeing Mai as she is, not how she’d like her to be.

If she knew what Mai has been keeping from her, would she be hurt? Ty Lee would be, Mai knows, and that’s heavy enough alone, but Azula’s trust is the rarest commodity in any corner of the Fire Nation’s empire. What does she owe her for it? What does repayment look like, when the asking price is someone else’s blood?

Mai nods along as Ty Lee chats about all the ways she’s sure they can make safehouses on the far coast of the Capital Island as fun as the Caldera. Parties, she suggests. Games. Pai sho, she hints pointedly to Mai.

Her words are still frames of ideas that slip through cracks in Mai’s divided attention. Parties. Games. Pai sho. While Zuko and the Avatar’s friends storm the palace. War. Treason. Death, probably.

Parties, games, pai sho.

* * *

The night before the invasion, Aang sleeps.

Zuko doesn’t.

He’s going to storm the palace tomorrow. The palace he hasn’t seen in three years. Home. He’s going home. He’s going home with the Avatar. He is going to the Royal Palace to deliver the Avatar to the Fire Lord. To his father. He is going to see his father. He is doing what he spent years believing he would do and not at all how he thought he would do it. He is taking the Avatar to his father and he is committing treason by doing so, because the Avatar is going to strike his father down.

The tree stump shudders as Zuko pulls his sword from it.

His firebending is gone. His firebending would be gone when it matters anyway. The sun will turn dark in the sky. His father’s firebending will vanish. For once, they will be on equal footing. Azula’s fire will flee her too. She will know how it feels to be powerless. Zuko won’t be powerless. Zuko has his swords. Zuko has the invasion force. Zuko has the Avatar.

His swords spin and his footsteps fall in time.

The Avatar trusts Zuko. The Avatar trusts Zuko with his life. He trusts Zuko to know he is alive, which is as precious a piece of knowledge as holding a beating heart in his hands. The last beating airbender heart. The last breathing airbender. The last air in and out of airbender lungs. The airbenders carved human figures with the eyes closed, an aniconic attitude about something to do with enlightenment. Aang’s eyes are open. Unlike the rest of his people, Aang has the choice to open them.

A leaf flutters to the ground after Zuko’s sword slices it from its branch.

His father’s portrait in the palace hall has its eyes open. Every Fire Lord’s eyes are open. The ones who are not his father are dead, but they will watch their nation’s actions forever. They will watch with approval. They will watch with horror. They will watch with the scorn his father wore on the day he taught his only son a lesson about respect. He knows the royal portraits. He could close his eyes and see their lines burn red and black and gold behind his eyelids. Zuko’s eyes are open.

He spins as he rounds the other side of the tree.

Zuko’s eyes are open, but the lines of his father’s portrait burst from the dark. He cries out, stumbles—falls hard on his back.

The dimming stars spin overhead as Zuko catches his breath. His swords lay in the grass, damp with pre-dawn dew, inches from his outstretched hands. He pushes himself up to his elbows, certain the lack of sleep is getting to him.

In the grey, changeable light, the noodle portrait of Fire Lord Ozai that Aang pinned to the tree stares grimly back.

A thud rings through Zuko’s chest as he lets himself fall back with a heavy sigh. The flash of terror was its own waking nightmare; in the hour before the rest of the group rises, Zuko drifts into an anxious, dreamless doze.

* * *

Aang wakes bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Zuko drags himself out of the woods to find the rest of the group watching the horizon.

“What’s happening?” he mumbles.

Wordlessly, Sokka points. The invasion force emerges from a cloud of fog.

“There’s dad’s ship!” Katara says excitedly, squeezing Sokka’s arm. He grins at her. She takes off down the narrow path from the high cliffs to the shore. The rest of the group races after.

“Your father is here?” Zuko croaks as the ships swell in size as they approach. He runs fingers through his hair and pulls out several blades of grass and a twig.

Sokka shoots Zuko a weird look.

“Of course our dad is here. He’s leading the fleet.”

“Right. Of course,” Zuko repeats weakly.

“I bet he’ll be excited to see you again,” Aang jokes. He nudges Zuko playfully.

“Don’t tell him who I am.” Zuko crosses his arms tight around his chest, glaring like he wants to burn a hole in the sky.

“What?” Sokka blinks. “I thought you guys met. He helped you after you burned yourself like an idiot—”

“Yes. But he doesn’t know who I am.”

“You _said_ he figured it out—”

“Not that part. He doesn’t know my name, or that I’m,” he hesitates, “Fire Nation.”

“You’re telling me he thought you were some random guy? Come on, Zuko—”

“Maybe,” Aang interrupts, “we should do whatever makes Zuko most comfortable. If he doesn’t want you to use his name around your dad, don’t do it.”

“Okay, but—”

“The boats are trying to come in,” Katara calls from where she smooths the tides for easy passage and Toph earthbends long, stone docks. “Sokka, can you grab the rope?”

With a last, suspicious glance at Zuko and Aang, he goes to help his sister.

“You still haven’t told them,” Aang says. It’s not a question.

“Neither have you. Like I said, it doesn’t matter.” Zuko scowls thoughtfully, then adds, “It’s more important that you don’t tell the Chief that I’m the prince of the nation he’s about to invade, okay?”

“I agree with you there.” Aang’s eyes focus beyond Zuko. A smile lights up his face. “You should come meet the invasion force. I’m pretty sure you’ve never even attacked any of them!”

“What a relief,” Zuko mutters as Aang takes off down to the shore.

With the ships emptied for the rendezvous, a sizable crowd gathers on the little island. Still, a leader knows his people better than he knows himself; Hakoda spies the lone, less familiar figure easily.

The boy hangs back, posture perfect except for the way he ducks his head, like he’s trying to hide his face behind his shaggy mop of dark hair. The hair isn’t long enough to cover the burn scar that stretches down his cheek.

The Blue Spirit sees him coming. Hakoda holds eye contact, smiles, and hopes he doesn’t bolt.

“Blue,” he greets, loudly enough with the nickname that any of the other kids who might be paying attention will hear it. It’s his fatherly duty to be harmlessly embarrassing. It works; the boy flushes with annoyance and darts his eyes toward where Katara is busy introducing Toph to Haru.

“Chief Hakoda,” he says, then holds out his arm in a Water Tribe greeting, a man to a man.

Hakoda’s smile grows. He takes his arm.

“I see my son has taught you a thing or two.”

“He has,” Blue says. “Don’t tell him I admitted it.”

Hakoda laughs. Sending the boy to the Fire Nation was a risk if not an outright gamble—on Blue’s life more than his children’s, admittedly, but it is more than a little relief not to have helped a teenager ensure his own execution.

“You all made it in one piece. I’m glad.”

“They barely needed my help,” Blue mumbles. Hakoda isn’t shocked that the kid carries a self-effacing streak, but he won’t tolerate negative self-talk from his son’s friend.

It’s good to know Sokka has a friend his own age.

“I wasn’t just talking about them,” Hakoda says evenly.

Blue looks up at him so fast his shaggy hair whips across his face. His expression morphs: confused, then surprised, then wary.

“I’m fine.” His hackles raise immediately.

“I can see that. Thank you for everything you’ve done.” Hakoda can be content with leaving it there for now; if they are all very lucky, he will have time after the war to worry about this young man feeling safe around him. “Are you sticking around? I know this wasn’t part of the deal, but we could always use another man who knows his way around a sword. Or two,” Hakoda winks.

“Yes.” He loses a splash of the tension in his shoulders—knowing he’s welcome and wanted must be a relief. “I’m staying.”

“Good.” Hakoda nods. A beat passes in awkward silence, which he lets stretch on in case Blue has more to say. He wasn’t exactly chatty the last time they met, but it could be now or never.

And Hakoda hasn’t forgotten the kid’s knowledge of Fire Nation state secrets. The invasion would make for a pretty good time to give up a couple more of those.

Blue glances at him, then away. He digs the toe of his shoe into the sand. He clears his throat.

“Hakoda!” Bato shouts from further up the shore. “We’re organizing soon.”

“On my way,” he calls over his shoulder. Turning back to Blue, he lays a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We’re better off with you here. Remember that.”

Hakoda misses the look of shock that he leaves behind, as well as the determination that follows.

Nobody sees the spark of fear in a pair of golden eyes. Zuko has a lot of practice hiding that.

“Hi, I’m Haru,” Haru introduces himself. “I thought I knew everyone in the fleet.”

The boy turns to look at him. One eye is narrowed, and the other—Oh. Yeah, Haru definitely would have remembered him.

“I wasn’t with the fleet,” the kid says. “I’m the Avatar’s bodyguard.”

“Oh. I didn’t know he had one.”

The boy shrugs. He doesn’t offer a name or a proper greeting. The handle of a sword strapped to his back glints in the sunlight.

“Okay,” Haru says. “I should go find my dad. It was nice to meet you?”

The kid nods. He doesn’t break eye contact, which makes Haru feel like he shouldn’t either. He walks backwards for several feet—until he nearly trips over one of the benders from the Foggy Swamp, leaning down to readjust her shin cover.

“Sorry,” Haru apologizes. He seizes the interruption as an opportunity to turn around. He takes off at a brisk trot, thinking _Good thing he’s on our side,_ followed quickly by _I hope he’s nicer than that to Aang._

Katara scans the crowd. Zuko refused to sit with them up front—he insisted that, since he had nothing to do with planning the invasion, it wasn’t his place. Katara suspects he might also want to avoid being in everyone’s line of sight. Frankly, she thinks it’s better this way; the troops either know the rest of them personally or have heard of them from dad. The last thing they need is anyone distracted from the explanation of the plan and asking too many questions about the mysterious addition to their group.

Once dad finishes his speech, the invasion force splits off to prepare.

“Chief Hakoda,” Aang calls, minutes before they have to leave. He drags Zuko along by the arm, who looks like he would rather be anywhere else. “My friend has to tell you something.”

“I had to tell _you_,” he hisses.

“I’m not leading the invasion,” Aang argues. “Everyone else has a right to know.”

Zuko sighs.

“What is it?” dad asks. He glances between the two boys. Katara imagines his face would be a lot less amused and a lot more suspicious if he only knew exactly who Aang is clinging to like a pentapus.

“The Fire Lord won’t be there,” Zuko says.

Katara gasps.

“We did all this for nothing?”

“No,” Aang clarifies. He gestures to Zuko, who squirms out of his grip.

“He won’t be in the palace,” he explains, “but he’ll be in the Capital. Do you have a map?”

Dad nods. He pulls the map of the palace city from his and Sokka’s presentation sheets, then unrolls it on the ground. Zuko crouches. Dad, Aang, and Katara crouch beside him.

“The minute you land on the beach,” Zuko says, tracing the path from the water to the palace with one finger, “word will spread to the Caldera. When that happens, the royal family will be evacuated to a bunker inside the volcano. I can tell you how to get there.”

He taps a blank space on the parchment, beside the black line denoting the perimeter of the city.

“You know the layout of secret tunnels under the Fire Nation Royal Palace. Why am I not surprised?” Dad shakes his head. “You’re a mysterious young man, Mister Spirit.”

“Mister who now?” asks Katara.

Excluding Zuko’s left, three eyes between the two boys’ faces bug out like they’ve each just swallowed a hummingbee.

“The Blue—” Dad looks from Katara’s confused face to Zuko and Aang’s startled ones. “Katara,” he says slowly, moving at last into suspicion, “Who do you think this is?”

“I—” Something is going on, and she hates being out of the loop, but saying ‘_the prince of the Fire Nation, obviously’_ to her father would be a barrel of giant nightcrawlers Katara knows they have less than zero time to deal with.

“No, no,” Aang waves his hands frantically. “_We_ know. But it’s kind of a big secret, as I’m sure you can understand, Chief Hakoda, and he gets nervous around lots of people. Isn’t that right, buddy?”

He pounds Zuko on the shoulder with a level of friendly violence Katara has rarely seen from anyone but Toph.

“Yes,” Zuko says between clenched teeth.

“We just call him by his name,” Aang adds, before shutting his mouth far too quickly. Katara can practically hear the moment Zuko starts seriously considering a return to his former occupation of hunting the Avatar.

“And what is your name? I didn’t think to ask.” Dad shifts from suspicious to empathetic in the blink of an eye.

“Lee,” Zuko says, loudly, before dad has even finished his sentence.

“Lee,” dad repeats. “Good to officially meet you, Lee.”

He extends his arm. Zuko, looking like he’s just been brained by a boomerang, takes it. Katara looks at Aang over dad’s shoulder, raising her eyebrows in a desperate _What is going on?_

_I’ll explain later,_ Aang mouths. Then adds, _I promise._

“There will be guards,” Zuko says to Aang after dad lets go of his arm. “Not just in the palace itself. In the city, too. If you want to make it through them, you’ll need backup. Do you have anyone to spare?” He directs this last question to dad.

“Everyone on this mission has a role,” dad says gravely. “Plenty of my men have experience staying quiet when the situation demands it, but Aang will want someone skilled in stealth. Two warriors can’t fight an entire city, Avatar or not.”

“Right,” Zuko agrees.

“Actually,” dad says thoughtfully, “I think we _do_ have one man on our side who fits the bill. He’s already broken into a Fire Nation compound, and I hear he knows the city pretty well.”

“Sounds perfect,” says Zuko. “Will you be able to get the plan to him before the ships leave?”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

Katara and Aang flick their eyes back and forth between Zuko’s face and dad’s as if watching a rapid-fire game of earthbending ball. Dad raises an eyebrow pointedly; Zuko scowls in confusion. Dad smirks; Zuko’s mouth falls open.

“Me?” he shouts. Katara would laugh if the weight of the day allowed it. Sokka would be delighted to hear Zuko’s voice crack like that.

“Would you rather I send one of the swampbenders?” dad deadpans.

“What—No, I—” Zuko looks pleadingly at Aang.

“He has a point,” Aang says. Zuko huffs, then turns his eyes on Katara.

The plain worry on Zuko’s face makes her heart constrict—not unlike that baby tiger-seal Sokka mocked her about. She wants to reassure him that he doesn’t have to do this, but then her eyes land on Aang. Katara reminds herself that this is a day for doing things no one should have to.

She looks up at Zuko, kind but firm, and nods.

He hangs his head. His face scrunches up in an agonized second of anger or frustration or pain, too brief to identify with any precision, before he looks up at dad.

“Fine,” he says. “I’m in. I’ll lead the Avatar to the Fire Lord.”

Dad claps him on the shoulder.

“You’re a brave young man, Lee.”

“Sure,” he mutters.

Bato’s voice rings out from the deck of his ship, calling dad to get a move on. Dad nods again to Zuko, clasps Aang’s arm, and hugs Katara before he heads off to do a final check-in with the troops.

No one says a word until dad is out of earshot. Zuko doesn’t look at either of them.

“Zuko…” Katara says.

He turns away from her and stands. She locks eyes with Aang. He smiles sadly, wraps a hand around his new glider, and climbs to his feet to stand next to Zuko. Their height difference is all the more striking for the opposite distinction in confidence. Aang has spent the morning summoning every grain of determination he can; Zuko has retreated further into himself with every word of planning or praise.

For a moment, time seems to split between them. Katara can effortlessly see how Aang will look someday: taller, wiser, a firmer handle on his own bravery. At the same time, she imagines a Zuko who has not yet had to grow up, too fast, into the person he’s become.

Their collective youth breaks over Katara. None of them are ready for this. All of them have to be.

“Meet me at the beach,” Zuko says quietly. “I’ll stay with the fleet until we reach the island. It’s more important that you make it in. And make sure Momo stays with my hawk, to keep him safe.”

“But what if—” Aang is cut off by Zuko’s retreating back. He walks silently to the shore, then boards dad’s boat not via the gangplank, but via a three-foot vertical leap to grasp the edge of the rail. He swings onto the deck and disappears.

“Well, that was just dramatic,” Katara mutters.

“Yeah,” Aang agrees. There is only a tinge of a smile in his voice—on any other day, she would have heard his familiar laugh like a bird taking flight. Katara vows that tomorrow she’ll make him laugh twice to make up the difference.

“We should go,” she says. Aang nods.

The invasion force pushes off under heavy fog and heavier expectation. The moon, unseen behind the blue of the sky, inches ever closer to its inevitable meeting.

* * *

“I’m so sorry, but we are closed for a private engagement.”

“But this is the best tea shop in the city! I’m only here for a week, and I was told I _have_ to try your ginseng.”

“Well… One moment.”

The door shuts. Iroh of the Fire Nation bustles through the nearly-full tables toward the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” asks Pakku of the Northern Water Tribe with an imperiously raised eyebrow—a specialty of his known throughout the Order.

“I already have a pot on. It’s no trouble,” Iroh says.

“We are planning a _coup_,” snaps Jeong Jeong of Exile. “Is this really the time for tea?”

“You of all people should know,” Iroh chides gently, “how something as small as a cup of tea can make or break a victory. We are still waiting on others. There’s no rush.”

“Speaking of others,” says Ah Long of the Earth Kingdom, an initiate with a background in falconry and a promising talent for conveying and interpreting sensitive correspondence, “Piandao of the Fire Nation said he will answer your call, Grand Lotus, and bring the latest reports from the Caldera with him when he arrives.”

“Good, good,” Iroh hums. Porcelain clinks gently as he sets the steaming cup in a saucer. He hurries to the door, cracks it open, and hands it to the visiting stranger on his doorstep. “Here you are. Bring it back tomorrow, would you? I’m quite fond of the pattern on this set.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Selling tea is my profession, and I’m on vacation! Have a lovely evening.” Iroh bows. The door shuts on stammering, confused objections.

“Now can we get back to it?” sighs Pakku.

“Yes. Of course.” Iroh sits humbly across from the Northern Water Tribe’s greatest master. He stares down at the table between them, stroking his beard. Then, he reaches out with a finger extended, and slides his wheel tile into the western desert.

Over his shoulder, Jeong Jeong hums thoughtfully. Ah Long watches with rapt attention. The game goes on.

* * *

The jagged edge of the Caldera rises, ever closer. The memory of a kiss and the taste of the snacks the Mechanist packed for his flight are, together, almost enough to overwhelm the worry on the back of Aang’s tongue. He swallows it. He flies.

He rounds the beach in tight circles as the submarines surface. From his view overhead, Aang can see exactly how many people have dropped everything to fight for him. Warriors in blue and soldiers in green move in tight clusters and unbreakable lines. Water slices chains; stone meets flame.

“Zuko,” Aang whispers nervously, voice carried away on the wind, “where are you?”

_Meet me on the beach._ Aang takes a deep breath, then plummets like an arrow straight into the water. It rushes to meet him; his closed staff breaks the surface tension. He bends a wave under himself to avoid slamming into the ocean floor, then surfaces behind one of the beached subs.

Aang doesn’t see the fireball until it explodes in a spray of steam five feet from his head.

“Watch it, little fella!” Due yelps. He does a complicated, straight-armed movement, and a sphere of water breaks and washes a Fire Nation soldier up the plaza. “You’re gonna be cooked possum-chicken if you wait ‘round here too long.”

“Sorry,” Aang says. He takes off along the shoreline. His heartbeat counts the passing seconds, time they don’t have to spare. A Water Tribe warrior in a wolf’s head helmet nearly runs right into him; Aang darts around the man.

“Wait,” a familiar voice comes out from under the carved blue snout, “Aang. It’s me.”

“Zuko?” Aang looks closer. “Where did you get the hat?”

Zuko tries to slap a palm against his own forehead, but the helmet gets in the way. He only succeeds in hitting it in the nose.

“Is that really important right now? Let’s go.”

“Alright.” Aang opens his glider, grabbing the handles and turning his back to Zuko. “Hop on.”

He doesn’t hesitate. His hands curl around the frame of the glider, and when Aang kicks off from the ground, Zuko barely throws off his balance.

They soar over the noise of fighting, explosions and shouts and crashes of stone. The palace becomes visible over the rim of the Caldera. Determination and fear bloom in Aang’s chest—hot air buoying him up, heavy weight pulling him down.

“Ah!” Zuko makes a startled sound, and the weight on Aang’s back shifts. There is a whistling noise, something heavy falling a great distance.

“What’s wrong?” Aang shouts in alarm, hoping Zuko can hear him over the rush of air. The glider tilts, met with an uncomfortable swooping in Aang’s gut.

“The helmet!” Zuko shouts morosely. “The Chief lent it to me. It fell.”

“Phew,” Aang laughs. “For a second, I was worried we were in big trouble.”

“Don’t jinx it.”

“What?”

“I said—Never mind.”

“I can’t hear you!”

“Never! Mind!”

“Stop yelling!” Aang yells. “This is a stealth mission!”

“I’m not the one—Oof!”

They land on an outcropping that overlooks the Palace City. Aang lands, anyway; Zuko does something more akin to tumbling and sliding for several feet. He pushes himself up by his hands, leveling a glare at Aang.

Pointedly, he spits out a small rock.

“Sorry,” Aang says sheepishly. “I’m not used to flying with passengers.”

“It’s fine,” Zuko says as he stands and brushes himself off. “Let’s just go. Quietly.”

“I’m not the one who was yelling,” Aang snarks.

“Yes, you were. Now _shush._”

Aang shushes. Zuko gives him a tolerant nod before swinging himself over the stone ledge. Aang peers after him as Zuko braces his heels against the slope and slides down toward the red-roofed buildings at the edge of the city. He lands silently, crawls to the edge of the roof, then looks back over his shoulder.

At his beckoning gesture, Aang jumps down on a burst of air.

They make their way toward the center of the Caldera this way: Zuko checking alleys and lines of sight, choosing the highest roofs, leaping from building to building with a speed and confidence even an airbender has to envy, and Aang following behind.

“Wait,” Aang whispers. He glances up into a window, dark and empty in the midday sun. No voices drift from the buildings; no footsteps sound off the stone streets. Not even a curtain stirs in the wind.

“What?” Zuko hisses.

“Where is everyone?”

Zuko’s brow cinches. He turns his head slowly, back and forth, like an ostrich-horse scenting the air.

“Wait here,” he says, and leaps off the edge of the roof.

“Zuko!” Aang whispers as loudly as he dares. Zuko doesn’t acknowledge him. He stands in the middle of the street, exposed.

His stillness ends with a startling burst of movement. Zuko wrenches open the nearest door and disappears inside a house. Aang gasps, shoves his fist in his mouth, and looks around nervously. His guide into the palace just wandered off into the home of whatever random nobleman lives here within walking distance of the Fire Lord, leaving Aang alone.

He floats down from the roof as silently as possible to follow Zuko inside.

“Zuko?” Aang says again. It takes a few moments for Aang’s eyes to adjust to the sudden dimness of the house. A shape shifts in the corner; Aang leaps into a defensive stance before Zuko steps into a strip of light.

“Nobody’s home,” he says. Aang gets the feeling he doesn’t just mean this one house.

“Maybe they evacuated already?” Aang suggests. “It took me a little while to find you.”

“No,” Zuko shakes his head. He walks away, back into the sunlit street, and strolls cautiously between the abandoned houses. “A lot of the nobility don’t live here year-round, but there are still thousands of people in the Caldera at any given time. They couldn’t have gotten everyone out so fast. Unless—”

He stops. One hand lays flat against the white stone wall of an ornate home. The other clenches into a fist.

Aang’s eyes widen. His knuckles go white around his staff, braced against an oncoming tide of fury.

“They knew.”

Dad is hurt. Katara is out of commission to heal him. They’ve lost most of the rocky ammunition they brought along for the earthbenders, and now a fifteen-year-old who flubbed his first oral presentation earlier today is leading a potentially war-ending military engagement.

Other than that, things are going pretty swimmingly.

Sokka mentally rescinds that last part the moment Aang and Zuko fall out of the sky.

“So, what, we’re going back to the palace?” Zuko asks. When he and Aang flew to the plaza, he felt something he vows to never admit to any of them—relief. Relief that the day was ruined, that he wouldn’t have to meet his father’s eyes and own his treason there. It’s monstrously selfish, and stupid, and weak.

The war needs to end. That’s more important than the fearful yearning he ought to have outgrown by now.

“I don’t think we should,” Sokka says. “If they knew we were coming, the palace could be a trap. We should find another way in and gain the element of surprise.”

“If it’s an underground secret bunker we’re breaking into,” Toph says with a massive grin, “I’m just the girl to do it.”

That same selfish weakness pounds in Zuko’s head on the short flight on Appa to the hillside.

“There,” Zuko croaks, pointing to the approximate area above the layered tunnels that hold the royal family’s emergency chambers.

They had to use the bunker once when Zuko was very young. It was a storm, a downpour that threatened to flood the Caldera, forceful winds that blew shingles off roofs and tore trees up by the roots. He remembers the childish envy he felt about mom carrying Azula and not him—regardless of the fact that his sister was three years old at the time. He remembers father’s disinterested distance, speaking with one of his war ministers while Zuko watched and wanted his attention instead, knowing even then how unlikely he was to get it. He remembers Lu Ten teaching him a game of matching tiles.

Toph breaks the hillside open.

Zuko hasn’t been down here in over ten years, but every member of the royal family is taught to memorize the layout of the bunker in case of an attack. If the situation were at all funny, Zuko would smirk at the thought. It looks like that knowledge has come in handy during an invasion after all.

The first door crumples and splits open like rice paper under Toph’s hands—and elbows, and feet. The way she bends metal is different than the way she bends earth. Zuko wonders if he could use some of it for firebending. The sheer stubbornness inherent in the action feels relatable to him, at the very least.

It also makes him wonder how long it took Toph to sculpt the swords on his back so perfectly. Probably all night.

He thinks about Toph’s bending. He thinks about his swords. He thinks about anything in the world that isn’t the stone hallway around him and what—who—is waiting at the end of it.

“Ah!” The four of them whirl around in unison. A wide-eyed nobleman freezes at the sight of Sokka’s sword, Toph’s raised stone, Zuko’s ready stance, and Aang—Well. At Aang.

Aang, who is polite enough to thank the man when he tells them exactly where to go.

“Hang on,” Zuko says. A second massive door stands before them, right where the man said it would be. “This is too easy.”

“Too easy?” Sokka repeats. “The eclipse has already started. We’re wasting all our time, and did you miss the part where we almost died in burning hot magma?”

“I didn’t,” Toph chimes in.

“Where else would he be, Zuko?” Aang asks.

“This isn’t the only bunker,” Zuko explains. “There are three levels. This is the first, but if it were compromised, he would be—”

“We don’t have time to check them all,” Sokka argues.

“And we don’t have time to be wrong! What if it’s a trap?”

Sokka stares at him. His eyes are hard and smart and determined, but Zuko has a lifetime of learning to be the first and last of those behind him too. The middle one, he’s still working on.

“You two,” Sokka says at last to Zuko and Aang, “wait here. Toph and I will go in. If the Fire Lord is there, we’ll give you a signal. If he’s not, Zuko, take Aang to the next bunker.”

Zuko wants to argue—leaving Toph and Sokka behind to face whatever’s waiting for them, _alone?_—but the moon ticks further across the sun with every passing second. He barely has time to give a tight nod before Toph busts through the door with a squeal of metal.

Sokka disappears behind her.

Aang looks at Zuko. Zuko looks at Aang.

A rumble of earthbending shakes the walls.

“Okay!” Sokka’s voice echoes dimly from inside the chamber. “You were right! Go!”

Another clash, this one with the metal of a sword. Zuko doesn’t take the time to loudly curse, though he plans to more than make up for it later.

Aang takes a half step toward the chamber—loyal to a fault, self-sacrificing, Zuko gets it but he also _does not have time_ for it right now—until a hand fists in the back of his robe and Zuko pulls him down the hall.

“What if he’s not in this one either?” Aang asks worriedly. Their sprinting footsteps ring out too loud. Anyone else could be waiting for them around any corner.

“Then you leave me behind to deal with whatever _is,_” Zuko says, “and go to the last one on your own. You probably won’t need to,” he adds, then pulls Aang to an abrupt halt.

“What are you doing?”

Zuko jams one hand into a hidden divot in the wall. He finds the lever. The wall slides open, which serves as answer enough to Aang’s question.

“Why won’t he be in the third bunker?” Aang asks. He takes the stairs five at a time on quick sweeps of air.

“It hasn’t been in use since Sozin’s day,” Zuko explains. He’s barely keeping up with Aang, but if he breaks his neck on the stone steps at least he’ll have gotten the Avatar where he needs to go. “It’s kind of full of magma now.”

“Yeah, that’ll do it.”

They hit the hallway, and from there it’s a short dash to a much smaller metal door flanked by two burning sconces.

“I—” Zuko’s voice catches. The door looms. The fires burn. “I’ll go in first, to see if it’s a trap. Like Sokka did. It’s important that you—I’ll go, I—”

“Zuko,” Aang says, “you don’t have to. We can go together. Whatever’s in there, we can handle it.”

“Getting you to the Fire Lord is the most important thing,” Zuko says. It’s as much a reminder to himself—the war takes lives every day. His own is nothing. His father’s is nothing. That’s the cost of peace, which cannot be paid without the Avatar.

“Okay,” Aang agrees. “But hurry.”

“Right. Yeah.” Now. _Now._ This is happening now.

Zuko opens the door.

A line of imperial firebenders stands ready, a blood-red set of armor suits without faces to assign guilt or humanity. Their spears aim at Zuko. The two sharpest weapons in the room pierce him, and they aren’t made of metal. They are the only visible eyes on the other side of the chamber.

Zuko shuts the door behind himself.

“Prince Zuko,” says Fire Lord Ozai. “What are you doing here?”

Honestly, Azula was half expecting the Avatar.

It is rare that Azula is wrong, and rarer still to feel relieved by it. Of course the Avatar is dead—she struck him with _lightning._ She watched with her own eyes as he fell out of the air, limp and charred like one of the ridiculous dolls Uncle sent her from the war front when she was a kid.

She has no regrets. The worry was small and near-impossible, true, but it’s better to indulge every worry than to be taken by surprise, which is a lesson the Water Tribe oaf and the tiny earthbender could stand to learn. Dismissing the impossible is a good way to end up dead—or worse, lose.

“She’s not even trying to win this fight!” he accuses, and Azula remembers with amusement that he has a younger sister himself.

That will be one older brother out of the way, then, as soon as he takes the bait. Azula thinks about Zuko. He’s somewhere in the Fire Nation, unless the ridiculous boat incident was meant to throw her off.

It doesn’t matter.

Sokka charges her: tears in his eyes, knife in her hand. He’s the first of two. Azula will be keeping score.

“I’m here to tell the truth,” Zuko bluffs. Aang won’t have a fair shot with all these guards, he has to get them to leave somehow. If he makes enough of a nuisance of himself they might take him away—but not all at once. Not all together. It would be more convenient to kill him if he attacks, and he’ll be no use to the Avatar dead. But if he can convince his father he has something to say, make him send them away and leave them both alone—

He should keep talking. What would Azula say? Something clever and tantalizing. She would be calm in this situation, without the pounding heart and the feeling rising in Zuko that he might throw up any second.

Then again, Azula wouldn’t be in this situation at all, would she?

“Telling the truth during the middle of an eclipse,” his father scoffs. “This should be interesting.” His brief moment of genuine surprise at Zuko’s presence has been smoothed back down. Now he is, as ever, the put-together face of his noble country.

He can feel the fear rolling off of Zuko, can’t he? He can see right down to the weak center of him. He always has.

The guards leave. They _leave._ Zuko wanted something from his father and he got it. The novelty has him weak at the knees.

“Not everyone is lucky enough to be granted a private audience with the Fire Lord, let alone defiant princes who break the terms of their banishment,” he says, settling back to sip his tea. “Make the most of it, won’t you?”

“You’re not—” disbelief crawls up Zuko’s throat before he can think, “angry?”

“That you’ve stolen into my palace during a siege? No.” He smirks. “From what I hear, this is the same dramatic stunt you pulled at the North Pole. You’re getting predictable, my son.”

Zuko bites back a choked noise at the address—_my son._

“Or maybe,” his father continues, a bite of bottled rage leaking into his voice that makes Zuko’s knees hurt and his face throb, “you mean your blatant disobedience to the one order I gave you. Yes, _that_ I am angry about. And I’m getting angrier for every second you keep me waiting for an explanation. Well?”

There is nothing to say. There are no words that come to Zuko—he practiced speeches, years ago, in anticipation of the day he saw his father again. Wrote drafts and crossed them out and rehearsed in his little metal cabin, his voice ringing back tinny and childish. He can’t remember a single word of them now. Except “honor.” That one came up a lot.

There is something else, too, that Zuko can’t remember. He should be doing—what? He knows time is of the essence. It’s urgent, time-sensitive. He has to tell—someone. Has to tell them—something. It fades away like the memory of a dream, like memory _in_ a dream. Zuko looks at his own hands and then at his own father and barely knows what either is. The chamber is utterly devoid of natural light—is that why the sun feels so far away? Why he can’t feel the flame in his own body?

The door behind Zuko opens.

“Fire Lord Ozai,” says the voice of a child trying to sound brave. Zuko knows that voice; he has heard it from himself enough times to recognize the layers of bravado intimately. But this one isn’t coming from Zuko. It’s coming from the boy Zuko brought, the airbender he personally delivered to the Fire Lord—the Avatar.

His father’s eyes go wide. There are many emotions Zuko has never seen on the Fire Lord’s face. Utter shock is one of them.

Years of confusion twist themselves into an infinite knot at the center of Zuko’s chest. Time itself gets tangled; he loses it, he gains it. The moon ticks across the sun like a metronome, keeping time. Taking it away.

Ozai stands. Aang takes a step. Zuko—

Zuko moves.

His swords are in his hands. His body is turning. His feet swap places with Aang’s, a dance with a finale unexpected to everyone in the room—including Zuko, who is in the room, and in the courtyard of a compound, and in the widening space between the moon and the sun. He is everywhere except his own head. He watches himself through Aang’s eyes and Ozai’s eyes. His own are open and unseeing.

The Avatar freezes. Two swords, striped pink and black and orange in the light of the chamber’s sconces, cross at his throat.

“You want an explanation, dad?” Zuko’s tongue is a dry lump of flesh in his mouth. The words scrape his throat raw. “Here it is. I brought you the Avatar.”

“Where’s Suki?_ Where are you keeping her?”_

Azula smiles.

“What are you _doing?”_ Aang hisses between his teeth. Zuko doesn’t answer. He barely breathes.

“Well,” Fire Lord Ozai says. His footsteps ring against the ground. The hard, sharp lines of his face grow larger with every second of his approach. “I have to say I’m impressed, Prince Zuko. It seems you’ve finally succeeded over your sister at something.”

Zuko says nothing.

“I see the weight of your travels has changed you.” Ozai’s voice is almost conversational. “You’ve proven yourself capable. Of following simple instructions, at least. That’s quite an improvement.”

Zuko flinches. His swords against Aang’s neck don’t move.

“You’re not going to say anything?” Ozai laughs. “It _was_ your inability to hold your tongue that got you banished in the first place, wasn’t it. I suppose I should thank you for finally learning.”

He turns his back on Zuko and Aang. His long, scarlet robes trail across the floor.

“And I should thank you,” he adds, “for holding him still.”

Ozai’s arms rise then fall in a circular gesture. He turns. The hair on Zuko’s scalp prickles, the only moment of warning before lightning sparks from his father’s fingertips.

“Oh!” Azula says cheerfully. “It sounds like the firebending’s back on!”

Swords ring like singing glass against the stone floor.

Zuko has never done this. He has done this dozens of times. He has dared the sky to strike him and he has dreamt of it calling his bluff. Lightning comes in at the fingertips, travels up the shoulder, down to the stomach—_the stomach detour is critical_—up the other arm, and clean out the other side.

In, down, up, out.

In.

Down.

Up.

Out.

For the second time in as many months, lightning strikes underground.

Shards of rock and dust fall from the ceiling like hail and snow. They fall into his father’s hair, which falls into his father’s face, lifted out of its perfect topknot by the crackling cloud of electricity that passed mere feet above his head mere moments ago. Zuko’s chi feels as if it’s been emptied out and poured back in. The lines of energy in his body are scrambled. Wisps of his own hair stick to his temples. The eclipse is over and Ozai has his firebending again. And Zuko—Zuko has his, too.

The air rushes back into the room all at once.

“Let’s go!” Aang shouts at the same second his father snarls, _“Coward!”_

The Avatar’s hand closes around his staff, which dropped to the ground sometime during the illogical hostage situation Zuko made for himself. His memory of the last few minutes is as tangled as his chi, but he knows one thing: the Avatar has failed in his mission.

The Avatar has failed, but the war still needs to end. The Avatar is here, and so is Zuko’s father.

Zuko grabs the other end of the staff. The Avatar, in his shock, doesn’t let go; Zuko pulls him closer, twists him around, and has an arm around his throat in a heartbeat.

“You shouldn’t,” Zuko gasps, straining for the words that will get everyone to the next sunrise alive, “kill him. He’ll just be reincarnated. Do you want to launch _another _siege on the North Pole?”

Likely not the best move, reminding his father of the day Zuko graduated from _banished prince_ to _wanted fugitive._ And while he can’t recall a single time he ever would have dared, it’s the safest bet of Zuko’s life to assume Fire Lord Ozai does not appreciate sarcasm when his defiant son decides to beg for an end to violence. The golden eyes staring into Zuko are bright and flat and cold—fire reflected in bronze. Always controlled, never the flame itself.

Deference didn’t work last time. He can only stand firm on a new approach and deal with the consequences.

“I’m sorry,” Aang whispers. Zuko has left him room to breathe, as a gesture to communicate his refusal to be cruel—surely Aang of all people understands that.

He has failed to account for the fact that the boy in his hold is, before anything else, an airbender.

Aang’s chest rises on an inhale. On the exhale, Zuko and his father are each blasted back several feet by the miniature whirlwind that fills the chamber for the briefest span of seconds. Zuko’s body slams into the wall. A foot away, as he falls forward onto hands and knees, the Avatar’s impossibly quick footsteps pass him by and disappear.

Through the ringing in his head, Zuko hears the shuffling of a man rising to his feet and another set of footsteps. These are slow, deliberate, and somehow communicate cold calculation through the solitary series of sounds.

Zuko remains frozen on the floor. The choice before him is more impossible than any he’s faced, nearly equal forces pulling him in two directions. He cannot decide if he should stand and fight or if he should fall, prostrate, deep into a full kowtow—

He is thirteen and begging for mercy, he is ten and dressed in mourning white, he is sixteen and spitting out a briney mouthful of his own blood with the wreckage of his ship smoking behind him, he is sixteen and struggling to his feet, he is sixteen and alone, he is thirteen, he is thirteen, he is thirteen again.

“You have fulfilled the terms I set to you. Technically.”

Zuko is sixteen. His father still towers over him.

He looks up into a face that has never been warm and has long since been unfamiliar. Fire Lord Ozai does not smile, but neither does he frown.

“Welcome home.”

“Dad’s all the way at the end of the hall then down a secret stairway on the left.” Azula smirks. “I’m sure he’d be more than happy to see you now.”

She vanishes down the tunnel. Sokka bends over, bracing his hands against his knees. He pulls in a deep breath through his nose, then wipes at his face before standing up straight.

“Do you think they found him in time?” he asks Toph.

Toph reaches for one of the stone walls, about to lay a hand upon it and feel for the vibrations of a pair of light-footed idiots whose wellbeing she is deeply, anxiously invested in. Before her palm makes contact, she hears a familiar voice.

“Right behind you!” shouts Aang. “Get out of here!”

Sokka’s head whips up.

“You heard him,” Toph says. She wraps a hand around Sokka’s wrist, curls the fingers of her other hand tight, and sets her feet into the stone floor. It lifts under her. She drags Sokka along as the earth turns each of Toph’s steps into a dozen more.

She expects Twinkletoes and Zuko probably leave the way they all came in. Toph gets herself and Sokka close enough to the surface before she throws a new hole open in the hillside.

The earth rears up and flings them into Appa’s saddle the moment Toph senses the big fuzzball. She clings to the side of it, unmoored as always by her distance from solid ground but perfectly aware that there isn’t a second to spare for her comfort. If Zuko and Aang come in airborne, she won’t exactly see them coming. She doesn’t know what happened in the bunker after they left Toph and Sokka to deal with Azula’s little trap, but from the urgency in Aang’s voice, it probably wasn’t their day.

Relief pours through Toph at the sound of a glider touching down and folding closed. Aang exchanges a few words with Sokka—she doesn’t catch them. She’s too busy listening.

Toph can’t hear the battle.

Before they went underground, the sound of earthbending and explosions echoed up the side of the caldera. Now, it’s quiet. Toph lets the wind carry the sound of her friends’ voices away from her. She strains to catch a sound; even the rush and thunderclap of firebending would be welcome right now.

But there’s nothing. The fighting just… stopped.

A sinkhole opens in Toph’s stomach, as deep and treacherous as the volcanic tunnels underneath. Today—Today is bad.

Everything happens too fast after that. They fly back to the plaza, half her friends take off into the sky pick and lose a fight with a fleet of giant balloons, and Toph forms a makeshift bomb shelter as the only thing between almost everyone she cares about in the world and getting blasted into a hundred tiny pieces.

She thought today was bad. It only gets worse.

The plan comes together in jagged pieces of inevitability. The fleet destroys the submarines. The adults resign themselves to surrender. They dedicate themselves to survival. Toph stands silently as Hakoda holds his children—she’s happy for them. She’s sad for them, too. And she hopes her friends know how lucky they are to have him for a father.

“Thank you all for being so brave and so strong,” Aang addresses the troops from atop Appa’s head. “I’m going to make this up to you.”

Toph could hear his quiet weeping a moment ago, but his voice comes out sure and even. He doesn’t just sound like her gangly, flighty friend. He sounds like a proper Avatar.

Each of them carries the weight of the day in silence for a long while after they take off. The Duke sniffles into his sleeve. Haru’s gentle voice hums soothingly; Toph assumes he’s comforting the youngest of their new, less-little gang. The two of them are near the front, then. She orients herself and the others in her mind, considering the space. Considering how much room there is on the saddle.

She thinks back to the end of the invasion. A blank spot she hadn’t wanted to think about burns like a hole in the world.

“Aang,” Toph says. She reaches out to feel Sokka on one side and Teo on the other. Her face scrunches up as she does a simple, dreadful math problem: five, plus three, minus one. “Where’s Zuko?”

“He—” Aang’s voice shatters, scatters in the wind. “We found the Fire Lord, but it was too late. The eclipse was over. Ozai shot lightning at me, and Zuko—”

“No,” Katara whispers.

“Zuko redirected it. He saved my life. He gave me time to escape.”

“He was captured too?” Sokka asks grimly.

Nobody but the wind even dares to breathe.

“Yeah,” Aang says eventually. “He was captured.”


	6. The Big Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW! This one took me a while. If any of you follow me on tumblr, you probably know that I've had a hectic few weeks, but here it is! Unfortunately, the next chapter is a big one and might take a little longer to get done, but I will try my best to stay on a regular writing schedule.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has commented & read & lurked! You're all the best.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: emotional manipulation, abuse, self-inflicted injury (not really self-harm), imprisonment, probably medical inaccuracy, and minor emetophobia.

Fire Lord Ozai releases three announcements to the public on the day after the eclipse.

Firstly, as predicted, the invasion plot failed. The nobility evacuated the Capital before the enemy forces arrived. The royal family is healthy, safe, and well.

Secondly, the Avatar is alive. He is an enemy of the Fire Nation. His attempt on the Fire Lord’s life during the eclipse was only stymied by quick thinking and great loyalty, else he could have plunged their nation into darkness.

Thirdly, Prince Zuko’s banishment has ended. He defended his father from the Avatar, an honorable act that proved growth and redemption after his cowardice years ago. He has regained his place in the line of succession: Fire Lord Ozai’s primary heir.

Before the news even reaches the dual tips of the archipelago, one of these statements is rescinded. But that will be later.

For now, there is a celebration to attend.

The grand chambers go from empty to lavishly decorated within the span of two hours. Every wall hanging, ceramic bowl, spotless cushion, and dustless sculpture is in its proper place before the first guest arrives. Urgency is no excuse for the sacrifice of taste.

Officially, the party is in honor of the Fire Nation’s enduring strength in the face of violence from foreign invaders. Unofficially, it is a homecoming of sorts. Nobles, military leaders, and those who are sufficiently connected to nobles-and-or military-leaders swarm to the palace from across the Capital Island. They are curious about both the timing and circumstances of this sudden, fifty percent increase in the royal family’s numbers.

An individual of such honor as high status demands does not _gawk._ However, several of them intend to take subtle glances. A peek or two. A glimpse.

After all, it’s not every day the Crown Prince unbanishes himself.

“You know what they’re all saying about you, don’t you?” The voice over Zuko’s shoulder fills him with cold dread. His hand clenches around the drink in it, and three small, floating pieces of ice melt in the span of a second.

“What?” Zuko says between clenched teeth. The question was supposed to be longer: _What do you want? _or maybe _What can I do to get you to stop talking right now?_

The answer to either question has always eluded him, when it comes to his sister.

“Oh,” Azula hums, floating into Zuko’s line of sight, unbothered by his refusal to turn around, “nothing interesting. It’s just that they can’t seem to agree.”

“Agree on what?” Zuko’s cold drink has begun to steam lightly.

“If it’s worse than they expected,” she says with a slow smile, “or better.”

Azula’s gaze doesn’t waver from the stubborn eye contact Zuko forces himself to make, but one of her hands rises to her face. She briefly covers the left side with one palm.

_“Augh,_” Zuko snarls. Before the sound has left his throat she turns the gesture into a casual flick of her hair.

“What are you growling about?” she scoffs. “Dad’s throwing you a party, remember? You should be grateful.”

He should be, shouldn’t he? Zuko says nothing. Azula rolls her eyes after several seconds and walks away.

He _should_ be grateful. He should be ecstatic. He should feel a sense of rightness in the tight topknot the servant could barely yank together from his shaggy hair this morning and the headpiece holding it in place worth more than everything Sokka and Katara still own from their village put together.

If he can’t be happy, he should at least feel accomplished. He has a home and a place among the court—too, his father’s ear. He has all the pieces necessary to do what needs to be done. The only thing left is himself.

Himself, and a moment alone with the Fire Lord. Zuko glances around the room. If his father is anywhere, it is likely behind the crowd of generals and admirals three bodies deep. There is no throne or curtain of flames in this room. There is a head table, but no one sits at it.

Zuko remembers another party, another day in this room: Lu Ten’s twentieth birthday. His coming of age. Less than four years before he died. The table was full, then, with grandfather at the center; Uncle and Lu Ten on one side; his father, Azula, Zuko, and mom on the other.

Lu Ten and Uncle didn’t stay at the table for long. Uncle found a tsungi horn. Lu Ten danced with three people at once, bouncing between them like a kuai ball as half the room laughed.

Zuko and Azula weren’t supposed to leave the head table. They did it anyway. He remembers what felt like world-ending importance that they not get caught as they dashed from the shadow of a statue to the underside of another table. They were both incredibly proud of their stealth skills.

Zuko is older now. He realizes, in retrospect, that the entire room could certainly see them. He tries to imagine two too-serious children biting their cheeks to stifle laughter as they scramble underfoot at _this_ party, and finds he can’t.

“Prince Zuko!”

At least this one doesn’t sneak up behind him.

The man’s mustache approaches before the rest of him like a pair of thin, hairy insect legs sprouting from his upper lip. The mouth underneath stretches into a smile. His eyes skitter wildly over a very specific region of Zuko’s face.

Zuko ought to remember this man’s name, or rank, or at the very least the context in which he last saw him. Nobody prepared him for this party—last night is a blur, this morning more so. He feels more like a circus animal on parade than a prince: dumb and trained and meant to be stared at.

“Hello,” Zuko finally says.

“It really has been too long.” The thin ribbons of hair above his mouth pull back like a hogmonkey baring its teeth. They wobble at the ends. “Why, I haven’t seen you since—”

He drops the end of the sentence like a clumsy waiter with a tray of dishware, the crash of it reminding Zuko _exactly_ where he last saw this man. His uncomfortable focus on Zuko’s scar makes sense now. He watched it happen.

“Anyway!” The man’s voice has risen in pitch. The image of Momo covering his ears at the noise flashes through Zuko’s mind. “You… have gotten taller.”

“Growth spurt,” Zuko grunts.

“Of course. You must be happy to see the palace again!” He laughs an octave higher than his voice.

At this point, Zuko is pretty sure that if he opened his mouth a cloud of smoke would billow into the man’s grimacing face. Instead of gritting out another monosyllabic answer, he nods.

“I’m sure it’s much more comfortable than—Uh. Your previous… accommodations…” His mustache quivers like a nervous hare-hound.

It occurs to Zuko that he would rather have Azula back. With her, he at least _knows_ there’s a motive he isn’t seeing. This man, the memory of whose name is as certainly lost as every trunk of useless things Uncle bought over the years that are now firmly at the bottom of an Earth Kingdom harbor, doesn’t seem to even want anything but to engage Zuko in meaningless small talk while shoving every foot he can get his hands on directly into his mouth.

“Your father gave you a ship, didn’t he? When you—left?”

“Yes,” Zuko confirms.

He tastes a lick of heat, but his control has improved immeasurably over the last few months. Living incognito as a refugee saw to that—though his temporary loss of firebending eroded some of that control. A fresh wave of misery strikes him on the head.

“And where is it? It took you all over the world, so I hear. If that ship could talk, the stories it would tell. My father was a naval officer, you know, and he always told us the most fascinating—”

“It blew up.” Zuko winces at how plainly appalled the man looks. He casts around for a bright side. “But, um. It was probably salvaged for scrap. Didn’t go to waste.”

He takes a quick sip of mango juice to break the tension, but pulls away with a hiss when it nearly burns his lips. What was it he was just saying about control? Silently, he gives up the thought of speaking to his father tonight. He’ll need a clear head to make his case.

Tomorrow, he’ll do it. Tomorrow.

“Ah.” The man and his mustache excuse themselves quickly while Zuko is busy fanning his scalded mouth.

If he sees this as a reprieve, he is soon proven a fool.

A rotating cast of nobles catch and release him for the rest of the night. They pull him in circles as if he has fishing hooks snagged in his clothes—ceremonial armor over a long tunic, lighter than his proper armor but much heavier than the robes he’s worn for the last few months; he feels exposed and stifled at the same time.

The room stops spinning long enough for Azula to materialize out of the crowd. She catches his eyes in the bronze trap of her own, smirks, and pointedly taps her mouth.

Zuko’s hand flies up to his face. He stuffed about seven miscellaneous desserts down his throat several minutes ago to avoid responding to a magistrate from the industrial district’s increasingly passive-aggressive comments about his hair, so he suspects Azula is taunting him for a stray clump of bean paste.

He finds no embarrassing bits of food. There is only the curve of his mouth, turned down in a scowl.

Azula’s mouth morphs into a polite, diplomatic smile. Her finger remains at the corner of her lips. Zuko glares at her and feels his own expression tilt closer to a snarl.

His sister rolls her eyes. She walks away.

When the next noble approaches—no one from the army or navy of any significant rank, Zuko notices abruptly, has spoken to him all night—he bends his mouth into what he hopes resembles Azula’s easy smile. He practically hears the screech of Toph’s metalbending as he tries to adjust his face.

Perhaps thinking about Toph isn’t the best idea, if Zuko wants to force himself into smiling. The noblewoman bearing down on him freezes for a half-second as she takes in his expression, blinks, and does a precise heel turn toward the table with the sticky rice.

He shouldn’t be amused by that. If he’s honest, though, it’s funny to have scared someone off with his face for reasons that have nothing to do with the scar.

_Funny_ might be the wrong word. Novel, maybe. Relieving.

The party wears on. As a child, Zuko would be dismissed from palace events at a certain point. Part of him expects this to happen now. It takes him nearly an hour to realize he has not seen the flash of Azula’s headpiece or her broad-shouldered, impeccable ornamental armor pop out from behind an innocuous nobleman in a suspiciously long time.

He backs up until his hip meets the edge of one of the long tables. From here, he can see most of the room while most of the room cannot see him. As his eyes pick out the quickest escape route through the obstacle course of the mingling powerful, he reaches behind himself to snatch another of the bean curd puffs—he noticed on the way over that they were nearly gone.

His hand does not meet food, but instead another hand. It pulls away as if burned.

“Oh,” Zuko turns his head and sees a servant in robes that make such effective camouflage she nearly disappears into the drapery. “Sorry.”

“Prince Zuko,” she gasps. Glancing down at the nearly-empty tray of puffs she is in the process of removing, she stammers, “Did you… want one, sir? The party is almost over and there are only two left, so I thought—My apologies—”

“It’s okay,” Zuko says, startled.

“I can have the cook prepare another batch right away, your Highness.” She starts to bow, seems to consider the gesture of holding the tray over her head while ostensibly taking it away, and frantically puts it down in order to brace the heel of her hand against the other closed fist.

“No, no, I just—” His hand hovers awkwardly over the crumb-dusted tray. He wonders what happens to the leftovers from parties like this. Do the servants eat them? Whenever there were custards that went unsold on a given day at the Jasmine Dragon, Uncle would insist Zuko eat as many as he wanted before he took the rest to neighboring businesses. They got bread that way once a week, from another shop on the street—before the couple who ran it disappeared one night.

Zuko hopes they left. He hopes it was on their own terms. He fears it wasn’t.

“Prince Zuko?” prompts the servant.

“I don’t want one anymore.” The words come out like a cranky child throwing a tantrum. He hopes she knows it isn’t her fault, though he doesn’t know how to reassure her. Would it be rude, or imply she doesn’t know how to do her job? He used to imagine throttling customers for far less when he was a tea server.

“Of course, sir,” is all she says.

She takes the tray and vanishes behind a curtain. Zuko reorients his mental layout of the palace; he had forgotten about the servants’ entrances tucked subtly away in every room used to host or entertain.

Or else, perhaps, he had no reason to think about them before. He is thinking about far too much tonight—and getting nowhere with any of it.

Azula must have left. Zuko eyes the loose distribution of the room and realizes his _father_ has left, too. The only people still here are white-haired gossips and red-cheeked naval officers more than halfway to drunk. The two groups are not mutually exclusive.

He considers the hazards of braving their presence. They might offer him a drink; they might clue him in to the latest court gossip. He could stay and pull himself up one rung of the ladder of good opinion among people who matter in the society he was born to rule.

Zuko slips behind the curtain and sneaks away through the servants’ entrance.

Servants aren’t generally happy when a member of the royal family steals into their narrow, ergonomic passageways for no good reason. They tolerated his exploring occasionally as a child; at sixteen, he’s both too tall to be only a minor nuisance and has been away too long to be ignored out of habit.

But at sixteen, he is apparently too important to be chased away by a spoon-brandishing cook.

The servants he stumbles across look shocked to see him. If they’re angry, they keep their mouths shut about it. At sixteen, Zuko knows how it feels to be on the other end of _keep your mouth shut._ The red-hot sting of embarrassment creeps up his neck. He vows to use the halls he’s meant to use in the future.

He’ll scale a wall and climb on the ceilings if he has to, but Zuko won’t stop a young man in his tracks on the way to change the guest chamber linens and cause him to nearly drop a clean set of sheets in his haste to bow. Not after this time.

Humiliating, probably for both of them.

It’s late. Zuko reaches his room, then pats down his pockets before remembering he doesn’t have any. He nearly turns around to stop by the kitchen again—a small piece of meat, a strip of rooster-pork or chicken-beef, leftover or uncooked, shouldn’t be hard to come by—before he freezes.

He was thinking about feeding his hawk.

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s tired.

He flicks a needle of flame onto the wick of a candle by his bedside. The room stretches beyond its little corona of light, cavernous and empty. He has fire in his hands again—other than that, nothing.

The headpiece and ribbon come out of his hair. Zuko lets out a sigh of relief. His hair is longer than it’s been in months, shorter than it’s been in years. He runs his fingers through it.

“Hey,” Mai says.

Zuko whirls around. His hands fall into a ready form and his legs find his root. His heart flies into his throat.

Mai, leaning nonchalantly against the frame of his door like a bored inkblot in the corner of a painting, doesn’t react. Her arms are crossed. One foot is braced behind her other ankle.

“What are you doing here?” Zuko asks.

“Relax.” She rolls her eyes without moving a single other muscle in her face or body. It’s kind of impressive. “I’m not here to throw knives at you.”

“Then what do you want?” Zuko won’t relax. He _can’t._

“I wanted to say hello,” she says. “Welcome back.”

Mai just looks at him for a long time. His stance doesn’t waver. Eventually she scoffs, turns on her heel, and leaves.

A tiny ribbon of smoke dances above his single candle. The room is huge and dark and Zuko is alone again.

* * *

“The new plan,” explains Sokka, “is the old plan. You just need to master all four elements and confront the Fire Lord before the comet comes!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s great,” Aang says, “no problem. I’ll just do that.” He flicks away a pebble. It clatters over the floor of the temple and spins to a halt a handspan away from the edge of the gorge.

“Aang, no one said it’s going to be easy,” Katara says gently.

“Well, it’s not even going to be possible! Where am I supposed to get a firebending teacher?”

The only response is his own voice ringing back from the far wall of the valley. Sokka and Katara look away. Toph drums her heels unhappily against the stone pillar she’s sitting on.

“Should we talk about—” Katara starts to say.

“Guess we can’t come up with anybody,” Aang chirps, suddenly, disconcertingly cheerful. He hops to his feet, glider in hand, and says, “Why don’t we just take a nice tour around the temple?”

He soars off the edge of the cliff.

“He’s taking it really hard,” Toph says.

* * *

“I need to see my father,” Zuko tells the attendant who helps dress him. The man—Zuko doesn’t know his name and feels a flash of worry that it’s too late to ask—nods.

“Of course, sir.”

“How, um.” Zuko follows the hand that pushes him insistently onto a stool only to let go and begin the task of tackling his hair. “How do I do that?”

The servant hums thoughtfully.

“You could ask Naoki. Now please, Prince Zuko, hold still.”

“But—” A sharp tug at his scalp and the sound of a comb tearing through split ends silences him. There were no opportunities for a royal hair combing in the Earth Kingdom. He abruptly remembers that the last thing he did to his hair—before ripping through it with a knife—was to shave the itchy, uneven new growth when he and Uncle washed up on the shore of a colony after the North Pole.

Uncle had gratefully taken the opportunity to trim and even oil his beard. Zuko was in no mood for thorough haircare at the time. He wonders if he would have put more thought into it, knowing then what he knows now.

He would have cut it all off anyway. There’s no point in wondering.

The sun gets stuck in the sky—or it must do. The morning lasts an age.

There must be princely duties expected of him. What did he do before? Attend lessons, mostly. Train. Read. Get bored of training and reading. Climb trees and buildings and the rock face of the Caldera, when the opportunity arose. Beg his way into war meetings.

Should he still be in lessons? Normal teenagers go to school. Perhaps no one has brought this up because it’s summer—in some rural areas and the colonies, children get the entire summer free of school. Even this close to the industrial heart of the Fire Nation, there are usually long recesses around the solstice.

He might have mathematics exams and literature recitations to look forward to soon. The thought makes him dizzy. He didn’t even have an abacus on his ship—will he have to pick up where he left off at thirteen? Sweat breaks out across his forehead as he tries to remember the more complex division they had just begun the spring he was banished.

“Sir? Are you alright?”

He spins around to see an older woman in the plain, high-quality robes of a head servant.

“I can’t do math anymore,” he blurts weakly.

She blinks at him.

“I mean,” Zuko clears his throat, “sorry. Naoki, right?”

She bows.

“Prince Zuko. It has been a long time, I’m surprised you remember me.”

“My—” He doesn’t want to say _My mother liked you,_ because talking about her always feels like he’s swallowed something too big and hot enough to burn, but that is the truth about most of the palace staff who have retained a place in Zuko’s memory. “I wouldn’t forget.”

“Aku said you had a request for me?” she prompts. The sharp morning sunlight through the hall windows bleaches half her face to nothing but an eye, the impression of a nose, a missing corner of a mouth.

“Yeah,” Zuko says after a mortifying second of silence. “I, um. Need to speak to my father. Alone. Do you know how I can…?”

“I’m sure he means to meet with you soon,” she says with a note of firm reassurance in her voice. “It’s not every day his son comes home, is it? You’ll be notified, Prince Zuko.”

“But, when—”

“The next few days, I’d imagine—”

“It’s urgent,” Zuko insists.

“I’ll tell you what, dear,” she says, and the word goes straight to a painful little place deep in Zuko that makes him want to either scream or do anything in the world for her. “When it happens, I’ll tell you myself.”

“But—”

“I have duties to attend to. I hope your day is pleasant, and welcome home.” She bows again and turns away from him. Her robes are red and the hair that falls over her shoulders is streaked with gray, but with a darkening shift in color the scene would be too familiar.

“Come back,” Zuko demands. A hot flush of helplessness and anger burns in his throat. “I—I order you to come back!”

Naoki stops.

“I manage the royal household, Prince Zuko,” she explains. Her voice is different now—not as he remembers it. “I have nothing to do with your father’s schedule. He is a busy man.”

She turns around. Her eyes are a rich brown he has seen more of in the Earth Kingdom than the Fire Nation. Then again, he has met many more of the poor than the noble in the former, and the opposite in the latter.

“Can I help you in any other way?” she asks.

“N—no.” Zuko could dissolve into a cloud of shame. “I shouldn’t have ordered you around.”

“It is your right,” Naoki replies.

She bows her head once.

A moment later, Zuko is alone in the wide hallway. Light streams in like water. It warms the earth. It hangs in the air, so solid he could almost reach out and touch it.

* * *

“Hey, Teo,” Haru says, “do _you_ know where the hawk came from?”

Teo looks up. The finger gently scritching the hawk just under its little beak pauses, prompting an affronted squawk from the bird in question.

“I think he belonged to their friend,” he replies quietly. The temple echoes—good for shouting down its long, branching hallways to find out whether a friend has wandered to the Hall of Statues or the pai sho room, but not so good for subtlety. “I heard Sokka say something about it.”

“Oh.” Haru steps closer and strokes a knuckle over the hawk’s proud head. He didn’t know the boy with the scar and the swords—Zuko, apparently—beyond their one, awkward interaction, but he knows how it feels to carry the kind of guilt and loss his friends must feel. He feels it for his dad every day. Just after he thought he could finally put that weight down, it found him again. Found them all.

The bird is a living reminder. No wonder Aang won’t come near it. Honestly, Haru had assumed it was because the Avatar was squeamish about feeding it raw meat. Let that serve as a lesson, he thinks: you never know what anyone else is going through.

“Do you think he has a name?” Teo asks.

“I could ask Toph. She said she’d practice earthbending with me later today.” Haru shifts his hand to stroke its soft belly feathers. The hawk extends its uninjured wing and runs its beak along the long, shiny plumage.

“We could give him one.” Teo grins mischievously.

“You want to name the hawk? He doesn’t belong to you.”

“We’re the ones taking care of him right now,” Teo points out. “When the troops come back—_when,_” he adds firmly, “we’ll hand him off to Zuko. We’ll be like… bird foster parents.”

“That doesn’t mean we get to name him.”

“It could be a nickname,” Teo insists. “Like we’re his fun uncles.”

“I could see myself as a bird uncle,” Haru nods slowly.

“I want to be a bird uncle!” shouts The Duke. He holds the helmet onto his head as he sprints down the ramp to what Haru thinks was once a dining area. It’s immediately become their go-to hangout spot inside the temple: accessible via Teo’s chair, plain stone walls Haru doesn’t mind bending, and lined up and down with tiered platforms for The Duke to climb.

The kid loves climbing stuff. Haru can respect that, but it’s stressful to be de-facto babysitter to an eight-year-old who knows from experience exactly how high a surface he can safely leap off—higher than Haru expected—and will not hesitate to do so at any given opportunity.

“Okay,” Haru says, “you can be a bird uncle too.”

“Great! Why are we bird uncles?”

“Because of the bird.” Teo points to the hawk perched on the handle of his chair. “We’re trying to think of a name for him.”

The Duke grins.

“We should call him Duke.”

“But…” Teo makes desperate eye contact with Haru. “That’s your name?”

“No it’s _not,”_ The Duke corrects emphatically. Haru bites the inside of his cheek against a laugh. “It’s _The_ Duke.”

“Sorry, The Duke. But you want the bird to be Duke…” Teo says slowly, “why?”

“So when people call _me_ Duke_,_ I can point to the bird and say ‘you’re talking to him.’”

Teo opens his mouth, then closes it again. He looks thoughtful for several seconds.

“The Duke,” he finally says, “you’re a genius.”

The Duke smiles. He looks up at Haru expectantly, waiting for the final vote.

“I like it,” Haru says with a smile. He pats the hawk on its smooth, feathery back. “Nice to meet you, Duke.”

Three hours later, Toph laughs so hard she drops a boulder. The crash rings through the high, cylindrical chamber, up and out the open skylight above.

“Oh, man.” She shakes her head. “_Duke._ That’s great. Sokka will be so mad he didn’t think of it first, and it’s going to drive Sparky—”

She stops. The echo of her laughter dies away.

“Toph?”

Her small, pale hands clench at her sides. He’s not the quickest study, but she told him the first time they earthbent together that he was a good listener—to her and to the earth. Her lesson in sensing the world through bending was short and Toph insisted it would be gradual, but it strikes Haru that he must have already learned something.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to feel her shaking.

“Sorry,” she says abruptly. “I’m done for today.”

Toph raises a column of stone beneath herself, two dozen feet high, and steps out through the opening above. Haru watches her go without a word.

* * *

“Finally,” Azula says, acting the part of the most aggrieved young woman in the world. “We can get started.”

Zuko glares. She sits at the long dining table in the place that was once his. He can’t be certain it’s intentional, but when it comes to Azula he knows well enough to always assume malice.

The midday meal the day before was a disaster. Apparently, most of the staff were unaware they had another royal mouth to feed. Azula had taken lunch in her chambers, father was in the habit of dining with his generals, and Zuko had stood in the dining room for fifteen minutes wondering if it had been moved in the last three years.

He got a frantically-made bowl of soup and later ate dinner at the endless party. Breakfast this morning was fresh dragonfruit, so startling in its nostalgic familiarity he nearly choked. He thinks he might not be ready for a real lunch.

A real lunch, he gets.

“How was your trip, Zuzu?” Azula begins the moment he decides it’s safe enough to bite into the rich dolphinfish in front of him.

“My_ what?_” he shouts with his mouth full.

Azula sneers.

“It obviously didn’t help your table manners.”

The jab itself doesn’t hurt—she insulted him the same way early this spring, _Have you become uncivilized so soon?_ It’s unlike Azula to reuse material, so she must be working toward something a lot worse. No, what hurts is the look on the servant’s face over Azula’s shoulder.

He agrees with her, Zuko can tell. Surprise and disapproval flash briefly across the man’s face before a calm mask of professionalism replaces it.

“My manners are fine,” Zuko snaps. After he swallows his food.

“Mmhm. Just like your hair and your firebending.” Azula says the last with a high, too-casual air. “All fine.”

Zuko grits his teeth. Mai’s _Welcome back_ stings like the backhand he knew it was.

“But you didn’t answer my question,” Azula reminds him as if it were an honest mistake. She eats, dabs her mouth delicately, and waits.

Her chopsticks are as precise and steady as a pair of knives. She doesn’t gesture with them as she talks, like Sokka does, or twirl them in her fingers like Katara. _She_ doesn’t talk with her mouth full, which Aang will do a dozen times a day. He can’t imagine Azula ever taking delight in the loudest possible burp like Toph.

The image nearly makes him laugh. The memory of where he is and how he got here catches up to him before the impulse gets farther than his throat.

“No,” Zuko says. “I didn’t.”

Azula pouts. It manages to be scarier than her smile.

“Zuko,” she says, “you’re back home now. Do you really plan to spend the rest of our lives biting my head off every time I ask a simple question?”

He stares down into his fish. It stares back at him with one empty black eye.

“It was hard.” The simple honesty sparks a light in Zuko—the first time he puts words to the thought that maybe what he went through was worse than his actions merited. That maybe it didn’t have to be the way it was, maybe he made it harder on himself. “But I had Uncle.”

_And now I don’t._ His mouth feels greasy, the richness of the meal suddenly bitter and too heavy.

“Yes,” Azula drawls, “I’m sure he made it _so_ much more pleasant. And what? Did he drop you off in the middle of the Earth Kingdom and forget to pick you up after pai sho practice?”

“What?” Zuko’s heart trips over itself. There’s no way Azula knows about the White Lotus, about the kindness they found in the desert, about the tenuous network Zuko assures himself is keeping Uncle safe while he’s not around.

Because if Azula knows, then father knows, and if father knows—

“Where is the old coot?” Azula asks as if Zuko is the densest person alive. It’s familiar, it’s not much different than the way she always speaks to him, but.

The only thing stopping Azula from tossing Zuko in prison and throwing away the key is father’s declaration of his restored honor. Uncle doesn’t have that luxury.

This is the trap. It must be.

“I don’t know,” Zuko says.

“Really?” Azula’s eyes narrow.

“Really.”

Zuko’s lunch gets cold in front of him as he holds Azula’s stare. After an eternity, she shrugs and eats another piece of fish.

“That’s too bad,” she sighs flippantly. “Maybe _he_ could get you to lighten up for once. You’ve been in a worse mood than Mai.”

Zuko scowls. Azula eats. Silently, like she’s waiting for something, like she expects him to have anything to say to her.

The problem is, she’s right.

“Have you,” Zuko croaks, pushing room-temperature fish around its bed of kelp, “talked to dad?”

Her silence lasts a beat too long. Zuko glances up to see Azula staring at him again.

“Why?” Her mouth quirks at the corner. “Do you need me to pass along a message?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

Zuko stews in angry silence while Azula finishes her lunch.

“Well,” she says, “I’m off to do some training. I’d invite you to join me, but I wouldn’t want to do anything too advanced for you. I know how delicate your firebending can be.” Azula smiles at him before she leaves, tossing a wave over her shoulder.

“Show _you_ how delicate my firebending is,” he mutters.

“Are you finished with that, sir?” The servant leans toward him expectantly.

“Oh. Um, yeah.” He pushes the plate away. “Thanks.”

* * *

When Katara was seven, she accidentally tipped a canoe with waterbending and sent all of its contents splashing into the sea. Sokka included.

He’d fallen into the water under his own power not infrequently before that, and it wouldn’t be the last time—all things considered, it was far from the scariest. On his third fishing trip, he came close enough to drowning that his only lasting memory from the day is an afternoon spent barfing up seawater.

That was probably why he took the incident with Katara to heart the way he did; it wasn’t scary, just annoying. She wasn’t remorseful, either, but laughed at his soggy boots and his scowl. On that day, Sokka swore off his sister’s magic water powers for good.

He looks back on the stubborn vow with embarrassment now. For starters, Katara’s waterbending has saved lives more times than he can count. Sokka’s included. And beyond that, he’s finally learned what it means to his sister. Why she loves it. How it’s a part of who she is.

A stream of water slices through the air like a loyal polar bear-dog following her wide, gentle gestures. The form is precise, a trait Sokka never would have associated with Katara when they were younger but sees in her every time she fights or trains or heals. Water shines like living crystal in the sunlight that floods the temple. It dazzles Sokka, but Katara has her eyes closed. Utter concentration turns his baby sister’s soft, round face into something not unlike the carved masters whose stone memories line the temple walls.

He’s proud of her. He’s proud of what she’s done. He knows the life they’ve lived for the last few months and the work they have ahead of them is hard, and painful, and he wouldn’t wish it on anybody. But Sokka wouldn’t want anybody else by his side for it, either.

Katara turns into her next set, arms outstretched in front of herself, and opens her eyes.

The water shoots forward to hang over Sokka’s head like an axe about to fall.

“Stop that,” she says.

He blinks at her.

“Stop what? I’m just sitting.”

“I’m trying to concentrate,” she snaps. “I can’t do that with you _staring_ at me.”

“I was.” He does a mimicry of her waterbending forms that’s probably offensive in its badness. “Watching you do your bending. It’s cool.”

“Well, cut it out.”

“You usually love showing off,” Sokka scoffs. He gets up to leave anyway—if his sister is in a mood, he’s happy to make himself scarce.

“Showing _off?”_ Her voice rings around the empty courtyard. The fountain she pulled her water from ripples and spikes like the surface of a lake when Appa lands too hard. “Excuse me for taking myself seriously, Sokka, but some of us weren’t born with a machete in one hand and a boomerang in the other and dad to teach us how to use them.”

Sokka stops. He looks Katara in the face—her eyes are tight and her hands are closed into fists, which he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen her do while bending. The water over his head wobbles.

“Hey.” He strides up to his sister—if she knocks him down and leaves him dripping on the floor, it won’t be the first time—and puts a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Her lip trembles. She swings her arms to the side, but instead of dousing her brother, her bending water flies back where it came from. The fountain swallows it up gratefully.

“You know what’s wrong,” she says quietly.

“Yeah. I do.” He shifts his posture to accommodate the armful of Katara he gets before another second has passed and wraps his other arm around her to return the hug. “Me too.”

When Sokka was twelve, he watched Katara fall off an ice floe. She was always a strong swimmer and a waterbender to boot, but at the time he didn’t care about either. All he could think about were the stories of proud warriors going overboard and panicking when they hit the water, of blue-lipped bodies pulled ashore moments too late because onlookers assumed them to be too strong to lose against the elements. The lesson, greater than _don’t fall through the ice,_ was always this: nobody is strongest alone. Sokka hadn’t known what it meant until that moment, until all that mattered was doing whatever he could to get Katara out of the water.

He jumped in to pull her out. In her thrashing before she realized they were safe, she froze herself and Sokka together all along one side from parka to pants. It was a long, humiliating, three-legged walk back to the village.

Sokka thinks they never really came unstuck after that. He hopes they never do.

* * *

The afternoon is as endless as the morning, and Zuko finally breaks.

It was the first thought in his head when he woke yesterday, and the last when the hummingbee tempo of his heart finally let up enough to fall asleep. He resisted the urge, over and over._ It’s pointless. It’s useless. It will only make you feel worse._

Little could make him feel more pointless, more useless, worse than he already feels. He might as well prove himself as weak as everyone already knows him to be.

So Zuko gives in. He goes to feed the turtleducks.

Tiny pieces of bread send ripples along the silver surface of the water. Turtleducklings, downy yellow and smaller than the palm of Zuko’s hand, paddle in a line behind their mother. Their happy quacks are the only sounds in the garden besides the rhythmic _swish_ of water and the occasional tearing of bread.

He used to be able to close his eyes and feel his mother there, in the years after she left and before he did. Spring was his favorite time—he has missed the sakura blooming this year—though it wasn’t mom’s. She liked the autumn days when overripe cherries, swollen as if with blood, fell to the ground. She would watch the pigeon-squirrels peck and bury them for hours.

When Zuko sat with her on those days, he always ended up with cherry stains on the seat of his pants. _You never look before you leap,_ she would tell him.

_I’m not leaping,_ his child self would reply. _I’m just sitting._

_The two aren’t always as different as you think._

Zuko opens his eyes. He doesn’t know when he closed them—long enough ago that the sudden light dazzles. He has to blink away startling flashes of sun off the waving water.

The garden feels… empty. His mother isn’t here. She hasn’t been for a long time. Neither has Zuko. In their shared absence, the history of the place has bled away. The shape of it is here but the life is gone: a winter-withered cherry with the seed plucked out.

He sits in the empty garden where his mother gave him the first piece of cryptic advice he ever received. It wouldn’t be the last, though he had no way of knowing at the time. Advice he could never puzzle out and calm, quiet afternoons, and gentle prodding to do things he didn’t want to do—the memory hurts on its own with the ache of an old wound. It stings like a fresh cut as Zuko stares into the searing sunlight dancing off the pond and faces the reminder of what a disappointment he continues to be.

Uncle wouldn’t want him here. Uncle trusted him. Uncle let him go so he could finally do something right.

_I am,_ Zuko shouts in his own head. _I’m trying!_

_What is it you’re trying to do?_ his mind shouts back._ Who is it you’re trying to help?_

_Everyone. Father doesn’t understand—how could he? _I_ didn’t understand until I saw the war from the other side. He was never a general, never even a soldier._

_And you think you can convince him?_

_I proved myself to him. I regained my honor—I did everything he asked. He knows I’ve grown up. He’ll know I’m telling the truth._

_And then what?_

_And then—?_

_Your father ends the war on the testimony of his son. What next? What do you say to even begin convincing him to rebuild the world he’s broken? How many more generals do you challenge to a duel before you prove their cruelty is wrong?_

_I didn’t—_

_It doesn’t matter. What does he have to gain from peace? What does anyone in this palace gain?_

_They’ll understand—If I can just explain—_

_And then what? You never think these things through—_

“I don’t know!”

A cluster of turtleducks scatters at the sound of Zuko’s voice. He breathes in, out, in again.

The garden is still empty.

* * *

“Thanks, Haru,” Katara says as he helps her dole out servings for the dinner they made together.

“No problem.” He smiles. “I used to make dinner for my mom when she had to start keeping the shop open later. Dad would always cook for us, before.”

Teo laughs to himself.

“My dad,” he says fondly, “got banned from the kitchens at the Northern temple after the fourth grease fire. He still tried to cook sometimes, when he thought they wouldn’t catch him. He was great at sneaking in, but the explosions usually tipped everyone off sooner or later.”

“Is that how he thought up the peanut sauce bombs?” Sokka asks.

“Yep!”

The group’s collective laughter bounces off the temple walls. Katara feels a warmth underneath the cold weight of loss she’s carried since the invasion like a single candlewick slowly melting it, bit by bit.

“Remember the time dad tried to smoke his own seal jerky?” Katara prompts her brother. “Because he got too impatient.”

“While the last batch was still curing? And then he—”

“—lit it on fire!” they finish together.

“And then Bato got him to eat it anyway,” Sokka recalls with a chuckle.

The campfire crackles. Darkness steals quickly into the temple, hidden as it is. In the inconsistent, moving firelight, the faded mural of flying sky bison against the back wall almost comes to life.

“I miss him,” Haru says in the quiet, everyone else eating or lost in thought. “My dad.”

“I miss mine too,” says Teo.

“Yeah,” agrees Sokka. Katara nods.

“It feels like we _just_ got him back,” she says.

“I know how you feel.” Haru shifts closer to the fire.

“I’m lucky to have always had mine around until now,” says Teo, “but he was finally being honest with me. As soon as he starts doing the right thing, he’s punished for it.”

“I’m going to make it up to them. And to all of you,” Aang says. It’s the first time he’s spoken all evening, since Katara practically had to lasso him and tie him down to the temple floor. The firelight fills his wide, light eyes. “You’re going to see your fathers again. I promise.”

“It’s not your fault.” Sokka clasps Aang by the shoulder. “It was my choice to stay when things were going wrong.”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything either, Sokka,” Toph says. Her tone strikes Katara strangely—almost like she feels guilty too. But Toph did nothing wrong at all.

“It’s not _blame,_” Sokka replies. “It’s taking responsibility.”

“I’m just saying, you don’t have to be responsible for everyone. But you’re right, we need to take responsibility for what happened.” She shifts, sets her bowl down, and says, “What’s the plan?”

Sokka’s eyebrow jumps to his hairline.

“We talked about this already. Aang has to master all four—”

“No, I mean what’s the plan for rescuing Zuko?”

“Um,” Sokka looks at Katara, who shakes her head, as baffled as he is. “What?”

“The grown-ups decided to stay behind instead of fighting,” Toph says. “Zuko isn’t a grown-up, and he didn’t _get_ that choice. So how are we going to bust him out?”

“Toph, be reasonable,” Katara pleads. “We can’t just pick and choose which war prisoners to rescue. And we can’t afford to break them all out, not without another invasion.”

“We don’t even know where they are,” Haru adds. Katara hoped she would never have to hear him sound so mournful again.

“Zuko’s not just a war prisoner. He’s a _traitor,_” Toph says stubbornly.

Aang makes a sudden choking sound and starts coughing. Katara meets Sokka’s eyes as he pounds Aang on the back before glancing worriedly at Haru and Teo, who share a confused look of their own.

“What do you mean?” Teo asks.

“Zuko,” Katara says hesitantly, desperate to skirt around the truth, “is—”

“He’s from the Fire Nation,” Sokka interrupts, blunt as a war club. “He was banished a long time ago and turned on his people to help end the war. Anybody got a problem with that?”

“That’s brave of him,” says Teo solemnly. After a thoughtful moment, Haru nods. Sokka turns a stern eye on The Duke.

“What?” The Duke demands. “What did I do?”

“Your old pal wanted to drown a whole village to get back at a few firebenders,” Sokka reminds him.

“I’m not Jet!” He looks down into his half-empty bowl. “I’m not.”

“Leave him alone, Sokka,” Katara says.

“I know it’s not just people from the Fire Nation who are bad,” The Duke continues at the skeptical twist of Sokka’s mouth, “so it can’t just be everybody else that’s good. I trust you guys. Pipsqueak and I were alone for a long time. It was harder with just two of us. But now we’re not alone. So if you trust your friend, then so do I.”

Sokka stares at the boy, who stares back with a stubborn pout that makes it obvious just how young he is and how naive he isn’t.

“Okay.” Sokka finally nods. The Duke’s small shoulders relax.

“Great,” says Toph, “glad you’re done interrogating the eight-year-old. That doesn’t help Zuko.”

“Toph,” Katara says. “We all miss Zuko, but he knew the risks just like everyone else.” She lays a hand on her shoulder, which Toph immediately shrugs off.

“He broke his banishment and personally helped Aang attack the Fire Lord.” Each word out of Toph’s mouth lands like a hammer on stone. “And he did that for _us.”_

“We don’t know where they’re keeping him,” Sokka argues, back to where they started, “or if he’s even still…”

The temple rings with silence. Katara squeezes her eyes shut.

She opens them again at the sound of an air glider unfolding, just in time to watch Aang take off into the misty, blue-grey twilight.

“For once, I agree with Twinkletoes,” Toph snarks. She gets up, walks to the ledge, and walks right off of it. The canyon shudders with the sound of earthbent stairs jutting out with every step she takes and vanishing again behind her. The crown of her head disappears below.

* * *

Sunset turns the sky scarlet. Vermilion. Ruby. Carmine. Crimson. Zuko knows too many words for red.

It’s a victory for Azula, having successfully driven him out of the dining room, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He tells a servant he will take dinner in his chambers. They are big and empty, distant, unfamiliar, but so is the palace. So is every step he takes as it echoes off the marble pillars holding the place back from collapse.

Dying sunlight bleeds across red stone, soaks red cloth, pools in corners, puddles of excess red. Too much color turns the world colorless. He can barely see through all the red.

Zuko turns a corner, and a shadow stands at the other end of the hall. Mai, all in black, cuts through the bloodstained light as if she can bend it away from herself. She would in a heartbeat, he knows.

Both of them are held in the amber moment. The evening creeps closer—the red gives ground. Zuko can see again.

He sees. He is seen.

Mai turns on her heel and vanishes down an intersecting hallway. Zuko shakes his head, rubs his eyes. He feels a headache approaching from behind his sinuses.

Dinner, he remembers. Dinner, and much to think about. He follows a well-known path to his room, wishing he could follow his feet like Toph. It hurts to keep his eyes open, even in the dimming light. Even without all the red.

Mai shivers, though the air is warm. It’s always a little cooler inside the palace than it should be, no matter the weather. All the marble and high ceilings pull away the heat.

Normally she doesn’t mind it. Zuko, wide-eyed and pale, appearing at the end of the hall like a ghost story, has her wishing for an extra layer to ward off the chill. _He lives here now,_ she reminds herself. _And you _like_ ghost stories._

Usually, anyway.

Speaking of ghost stories Mai doesn’t like, she reaches Azula’s door just in time to see Ty Lee close it behind herself.

“Hi, Mai!” Ty Lee chirps.

“Hi.” Mai eyes the ornate door to the princess’s chambers. “Didn’t Azula want us to come over tonight?”

“She’s, uh, not feeling her best.”

From the other side of the door, Mai hears the muffled but unmistakable sound of terrifyingly athletic firebending. Ty Lee winces.

“But!” she adds before Mai can say anything. “That means it’s just the two of us!” She links their arms and pulls Mai down the hall, as impossibly light on her feet and unexpectedly strong as ever.

“Okay,” Mai agrees easily. It’s a perfectly acceptable alternative to hanging out with a moody Azula. “Where are we going?”

“Let’s go into town,” Ty Lee suggests. “There’s this dumpling stand in the industrial district—I know you hate going there, but they have the _best_ food, and there’s never a line!”

“I don’t hate going there,” Mai says. “My _mother_ hates it when I go there. Which is why I go.”

“You called it a barnacle once,” Ty Lee giggles.

“A hideous, rusty barnacle clinging to the side of a mostly tolerable city.” Mai shrugs. “That doesn’t mean I hate it.”

They step out into warm air and the sight of a brilliantly gaudy sunset painted by a tasteless universe. The evening is free: no stories or storytellers anywhere in sight.

Mai even thinks about smiling. Just a little. Nobody would have to know.

On her fourth dumpling, laughing quietly as her friend tries to talk through two cheekfuls of food puffed out like a rabbitmunk, it occurs to Mai that Azula must have called Ty Lee to her chambers early.

At the beginning of this whole mess, she sent Mai away first, then Ty Lee after to keep an eye on her. Ty Lee, who must have told Azula whatever prompted the flaming breakdown Mai overheard before they left. Ty Lee, who smiles and laughs and drags Mai to the ugliest place in the Fire Nation and treats bounty hunting and an evacuation like surprise vacations. Ty Lee, who knows what the world is like, probably better than Mai does, and walks lightly for a reason.

Mai had a job to do, and now she’s haunted by a specter of failure. Zuko, a ghost after all: something alive that shouldn’t be.

She finishes her dumplings and goes home. As she walks away from Ty Lee, she doesn’t look back.

* * *

“Aang!” Katara cups her hands around her mouth and shouts. “Aang!”

The forest above the Western Air Temple doesn’t answer. Animals chatter. Wind whispers through the leaves. Katara can feel the water around her, the life coursing through each tree and root and blade of grass—hasn’t been able to _stop_ feeling it for a week.

She wishes she could. It’s too present a reminder: _Where there is life, there is water._

Slow trickling through the living veins beneath her feet tickles the back of her mind like the steady drip of melting ice. It’s almost a relief to be alone; the moon is up, and every inch of its climbing height makes the rushing in her friends’ and brother’s bodies louder by agonizing degrees. If this is how Toph feels all the time with her feet on the ground, Katara doesn’t know how she stands it.

She pushes the thought out of her head and calls again: “Aang!”

He ran away again. Flew off like the first night after he woke up on that ship, convinced he had to save the world alone. This isn’t that, and he doesn’t mean it to be forever, but the knowledge only makes her feel worse.

He didn’t mean it to be forever when he left the Southern Air Temple, either. He didn’t want to save the world. He just needed some time to think.

That time, he got a hundred years to himself. The world can’t survive another century without the Avatar, and Katara can’t bear another night of not knowing if Aang is alive. She’s lost Zuko already, and dad, and almost everyone who has ever fought on her side.

She is not losing Aang too.

“Aang!” Her voice cracks in the middle of his name, a fractured syllable lanced through by worry and pain. Katara breaks through the treeline at the edge of a small clearing and falls to her knees. Grass and water fill her hands. The stars are visible overhead, illegible and unnamable to her—she thinks, given the latitude, they might be the same ones she followed in the desert.

The desert was quiet. No water anywhere. Still and empty and dead. Back home, the ice never moved fast enough to sing like this. The ocean did, but Katara didn’t know how to listen the way she does now.

Waterbending never used to hurt.

There isn’t time to _let_ it hurt. She has to find Aang. They have a world to save. She should be done crying over something that has always been lurking inside her. She should be able to deal with it _later._

Katara can only be grateful this is happening after their visit to the swamp.

…The Swamp.

A different voice drifts up from the silty bed of memory to pop on the surface: _If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together._

Katara curls her hands in the grass, and she listens.

“You want to talk about it?” Sokka asks.

Toph turns her head away stubbornly.

“No.”

“Okay.” He sits heavily on the ground next to her. The bottom of the canyon is littered with several lifetime’s worth of broken stone and rich silt. From the pattern of it, he’d say this is a riverbed during the rainy season.

That doesn’t explain the chunks of rock that look suspiciously like the result of an earthbender putting her fist through several sculptures. Sure, maybe they fell from the temple in the last hundred years. But Sokka is pretty sure an airbender statue wouldn’t be holding dual swords.

Sokka looks up. The perpetual fog that rolls through the canyon like a pot boiling over feels different from underneath. The tips of the temple’s hanging spires are barely visible, the only indication that the rest of the world exists. It reminds Sokka of looking down from Appa’s saddle as they soar above the clouds. It’s like sitting upside-down on the dome of the sky.

“Are you about to tell me how beautiful the stars are?” Toph grouses.

“Nope,” Sokka replies easily. “I can’t see ‘em.”

“Me neither.”

Sokka laughs.

High above, wind must be whistling through the temple. Everything is muffled down below, strange and secluded and not entirely unlike the claustrophobic corner of the Spirit World Sokka once inhabited for a day. Appa lows a short distance away, white-and-gray fur blending into the fog.

“Have I ever told you how Zuko and I met?” Sokka asks.

“No,” Toph says, a softer repeat of the word. She leans forward and pulls her hands into her lap, waiting for him to continue.

“He rammed a ship into my village and beat me up,” he says. “Then he kidnapped Aang and I almost knocked him into the ocean.”

“Sounds like a real meet-cute.”

“I _wish_ he could hear you say that.” Sokka smiles. Toph doesn’t. She crosses her arms.

“Me too. Are you trying to make me stop missing him by telling me about all the bad stuff he did? Because it’s not going to work.”

“No,” Sokka insists, hands up and palms out. “Not at all. Just listen, okay?”

After a second, Toph nods tightly.

“That wasn’t the last time any of it happened. I mean, the ramming into my village part was a one-time deal, but other than that we would do the same song and dance over and over.” Sokka waves his hand back and forth like a metronome. “Zuko shows up, Zuko comes after Aang, Zuko gets the stuffing beat out of him.”

“And how often did you lose _your _stuffing?” Toph asks with a rising eyebrow.

“Not the point,” Sokka says quickly enough that it will hopefully make her laugh. He gets a huff of air and a tightly-pressed mouth trying to hide a smile for his trouble. He can take that as a win.

“What _is _the point?”

“We got away every time, sometimes by the skin of our teeth but not always. Aang blew him into a _lot_ of walls. And the weirdest thing was, he never gave up. Ever.” Sokka folds his arms on top of his knees and watches fog roll above him, endless. “He followed us to the North Pole while it was under siege. He tried to fight _Katara_ on an ice field under a full moon.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. And that’s on top of everything he’s told us, what happened with Zhao and his banishment and wandering around the Earth Kingdom.”

“He’s been hurt a lot.”

“And hurt a lot of people,” Sokka reminds her gently.

Toph scowls, but she doesn’t argue.

“I trust him not to do that anymore. I do,” Sokka continues. “But even before I knew him as anything but a bad guy, I’d seen enough to know that he’s lived through things that probably should have killed him. What I’m saying is, I shouldn’t have said what I said at the temple, about not knowing if Zuko is still, you know. Around.”

“You really think he’s okay?” Toph asks in the smallest voice Sokka has ever heard come out of her mouth.

“I think Zuko could survive pretty much anything on pure spite.” Sokka smiles despite himself, despite the situation. “And I think if anyone is going to take that from him, it won’t be his stupid, evil Fire Dad.”

“Thanks, Sokka.” Toph rubs a hand over her eyes, then leans back on her palms. “Did he really beat you up the first time you met?”

“In front of Gran-Gran and everyone,” he nods solemnly. Toph snickers.

“Sounds like someone needs his _honor_ back,” she teases.

“Yeah.” Sokka runs fingers through the short, unshaven hair at the back of his head thoughtfully. “Maybe I do.”

Zuko puts brush to paper. He thinks. He writes.

He crosses out everything he’s written.

The moon is high and bright through the open window. It spills silver light over the manor houses just outside the palace walls.

He sighs, rolls up the paper, and leaves.

Beneath her hands, the earth itself is strung together by a web of water. Katara feels each root like a strand of her own heartstrings. They flow and tangle together—separate, inseparable. Up into the bodies of the trees, water travels tremblingly. It wants to take the most straightforward path, but life grows messily. Life pushes and pulls.

Push. Pull. The lap of the tide. The beat of a heart. The pull of life bringing water to its highest extremities. The push of gravity sinking it back into the ground.

Water in a living body, pumped by a heart other than her own, crashes through the slow tide of sluggish sap like a ringing gong. Fast, tiny—squirrelmunk, probably. A limb moves and water moves, neither before the other. A cloud of sparrowbats darts overhead.

Katara reaches further. More trees, more things that run and climb and fly.

There.

A slower heartbeat, a bigger body of water. Perched in a tree that must be younger than he is sits a familiar form. Katara makes a map in her mind of the miniscule rivers that run through everything in this forest, everything on earth. She starts walking.

“Aang,” Katara calls gently from the ground. “Come back. Please.”

She feels the turn of his head better than she sees it. The tree is an organic tangle of silhouettes, all moving one way or another. He would be impossible to pick out by sight alone. The wind picks up suddenly. It whistles above her head in a single, solitary stream.

“Okay.”

The heartbeat she has been following lifts up, then gently floats to the ground. Katara wraps him in a hug the moment he’s within arm’s reach. He returns it willingly.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she says against his temple. “But please don’t run off like that again. I can’t—We shouldn’t split up any more than we already have.”

Aang shifts in her arms. He doesn’t stiffen, exactly, but his whole body winces.

“I’m sorry.” He pulls back. Katara sees half of his face in the broken moonlight through the trees. His eye glistens wetly.

She leads them back half by memory and half by water.

_Thunk._

_Thunk._

_Thunk._

Three knives, three old marks on the wall. Dead center every time. Mai sighs. Maybe it would be more of a challenge if she threw them with her eyes closed. Or upside-down. Over the shoulder?

She’s done it all before.

Traveling with Azula was a respite from the orderly nothingness of Omashu—until it became a cycle of sitting in trains, fighting the Avatar’s friends, sitting in drills, fighting the Avatar’s friends, sitting in Kyoshi Warrior disguises, and fighting the Avatar’s friends. Coming back to the Fire Nation was a welcome return to a place where Mai knew where she stood and was free of her parents to boot—until it became a repeat of running Azula’s errands, complete with, you guessed it, fighting the Avatar’s friends.

Now she’s back in the Caldera. Azula has been busy doing whatever it is she does, Ty Lee has always been Azula’s more than Mai’s, and Mai has a house all to herself. It should be perfect.

Years ago, after a team-up lecture from both her parents at once that had felt like a trepanning in slow motion, Mai had thought that if she could have one wish for anything in the world, it would be to be left alone.

She’s gotten her wish. Turns out, it’s the most boring thing of all.

_Thunk._

_Thunk._

_Tap-tap-tap._

Mai blinks. She throws another knife into the wall.

_Thunk._

_Tap-tap-tap._

She stands from the end of her bed, goes to the window, and lifts the wooden frame of the screen. Her room is on the second floor. It must be a woodpecker-moth, or a woodpecker-bat, or—

“Hi, Mai,” says Zuko, dressed in a black cloak and clinging to the side of her house. “I need a favor.”

Mai slams the window shut.

_Tap-tap-tap._

She sighs heavily enough to blow out all the paper sections of the window screen. He couldn’t even be bothered to say hello when she _tried_ to extend a peace offering. He’s gotten her in enough trouble as it is. He’s an idiot and technically a traitor and not really the boy she used to know, not anymore.

_Tap-tap-tap._

Mai opens the window.

“Get in here,” she says, “before someone thinks you’re a burglar and blasts you off the wall.”

Zuko swings himself inside. Mai shuts the window behind him.

“Thanks,” he says awkwardly, standing in the middle of her bedroom like he doesn’t know what to do with his own arms. “Um. I like your… pillow.”

“Which one?”

“The black one. With the tassels.”

“Why?”

“It’s—I’m trying to give you a compliment! Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when—” Zuko flushes bright red.

“When you’re in a girl’s bedroom?” Mai asks wryly. He looks a second or two away from throwing himself right back out the window, so she sighs and says, “What are you doing here?”

“I need help with something,” he says. “And I didn’t—There wasn’t anyone else.”

“Gee, Zuko, that makes me feel so special.” Mai crosses her arms.

“If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.” Zuko scowls, shifting from foot to foot. He clearly doesn’t want to leave, but he will if she asks. With a healthy dose of anger, sure, but he’s being sincere when he says it.

Of all the things she could find refreshing, Mai never expected _sincerity_ to be one.

“I want to know why you decided to climb in my window at night. If you’re here to assassinate me, you could at least get it over with.”

“What?” He looks alarmed. Maybe the _wouldn’t know a joke if it challenged them to an Agni Kai_ thing runs in the family.

“Why are you here?”

“Oh. I, um,” he fumbles with his cloak, seems to realize it doesn’t have the pockets he’s looking for, and shucks it off. It slumps over the corner of Mai’s bed, a sad, still shadow in contrast to Zuko’s frantic energy. He digs around in his robes before producing a crumpled roll of paper.

“What,” Mai says flatly, “is that?”

“A speech. Or, it will be. I need to speak to my father,” he explains. “It’s important. And I—Talking isn’t… I’m not great at it.”

“No, really?”

Zuko glares.

“Forget it,” he snaps. “I’ll do this myself. Sorry for bothering you.”

He fists a hand in his fallen cloak and turns toward the window.

_He couldn’t just use the door?_ Mai thinks. She sighs.

“Zuko, wait.”

He pauses, one hand flat against the window frame. When he looks back at Mai over his shoulder, she only sees the right side of his face. For a moment, he is the prince she used to pass springtime afternoons with, teaching him to throw a knife without taking someone’s eye out. She would curl her hand around his as he gripped the handle to correct the angle of his wrist.

She thought about the smile on his face the first time he hit a target for a week afterwards.

The moment ends the next time Mai blinks. Zuko is older, and so is she. His hair is shorter and falls into his face, but not the way it did before: a single strand that would never stay where it was supposed to, always tickling his eyebrows. He’s down to one eyebrow now. Mai’s hair is longer. She is better with a knife. Zuko is—she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know him, not this angry young man about to jump out her window after stammering about pillows and speeches. She sees parts of who he used to be, but only in brief flashes. Sunlight on turbulent water.

“What?” he says with a creak in his voice.

Mai steps back until she meets the edge of her mattress. She sits and lifts one hand in a _go on_ gesture.

“Let’s hear this speech of yours,” she says with a tilt of her head: _impress me._

She doesn’t know Zuko the way she used to, but she has hit her target nonetheless. He still can’t back down from a dare to save his life.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t kidding about his public speaking skills.

“The legacy of the Fire Nation is one of—Um. No, wait, I crossed that part out. The _future_ of the Fire Nation hangs in the balance. We have the choice to end it. The war. We have the choice to end the _war,_ not the Fire Nation—”

“Stop.” Mai drops her face into one hand.

“Yeah,” Zuko sighs, “it needs work.”

“Yes. It’s terrible. But—” She pauses to take the deepest breath in history. “What are you talking about, ending the war?”

“Oh.” Zuko tries to shuffle his notes, realizes he only has one piece of paper, and starts flipping it back and forth before settling on the same side he was looking at originally. “I’ll start from the beginning.” He clears his throat. “Three years, four months, and seventeen days ago I was banished.”

“I think your dad knows that.”

“It’s called a prologue,” Zuko huffs.

“Skip to the action. Nobody likes a prologue.”

“That is _not_ true.” Zuko’s hand crinkles his paper even further. The other one lifts as he starts counting off on his fingers. “It establishes setting, gives context, and in a tragedy the dramatic irony can really elevate—”

“Wow, you’ve actually managed to impress me.”

Zuko stops.

“What?”

“Yes. I never thought it would happen, Zuko, but now I _want_ you to get back to your speech.”

His face drops into a flat look somewhere between annoyance and embarrassment. He smooths out a wrinkle in his paper and clears his throat.

“Growing up, we were taught—”

“Is this more prologue?” Mai takes out one of her shuriken and starts cleaning under her fingernails.

“—that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history,” he continues pointedly. “But that’s… Not true. It’s a lie—Okay, this part needs edits, I’ll skip ahead—But anyway, we have to create an era of peace. Wait, I have to back up because, um. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don’t see our greatness—”

“I thought you said we _weren’t_ great.” Mai glances up.

“I’m getting to that,” Zuko snaps. “They hate us. The rest of the world.”

“And?”

“What?”

“So what if they hate us?”

“That’s—” Zuko grinds his teeth, as high strung as he ever was. “It’s not good, Mai! It’s not good that the rest of the world might be better off if the whole Fire Nation sank into the ocean. We should be better!”

“Better than the rest of the world?”

“Better than we are!” He digs his fingers into his loose hair, crumpling his speech into a worthless ball of paper in the process.

“You can’t tell your dad that,” she advises. “I think saying it at all is technically treason.”

“It won’t be once I get it right! I just need to find the words. Which is why I need help.”

“And I’m the _only_ person who can help you,” she sighs. “Lucky me.”

“Listening is the least you could do, you know.” Zuko crosses his arms and cocks a hip in a way that reminds Mai uncomfortably of Azula. “After all those times you tried to kidnap me.”

“Whatever.”

“I mean, seriously, what is it with you?” Zuko stuffs his ridiculous speech back in his pocket and pulls his shoulders up to his ears as if it’ll make him look bigger. “A week ago you were throwing daggers at my head and now you act like it doesn’t matter. Like you’re not even sorry for what you did!”

“I’m not,” Mai says. “Speaking of the least I could do, you could say thank you.”

“Thank you for _what?”_ Zuko shouts. His voice must be audible downstairs. Mai is grateful, not for the first time, that the rest of her family is still in Omashu—_New Ozai._

“You have no idea how many times I saved your life,” Mai finally snaps.

She finds herself standing, leaning into Zuko’s space more aggressively than he is, with no idea of how she got there. A finger is pressed to his chest like a threat.

“What?” Zuko’s head tilts in confusion. His shoulders relax, and suddenly his perfectly-tailored princely robes look four sizes too big on him, like a little boy playing dress-up in his father’s clothes.

“I knew about the invasion. I’ve known about it since Ba Sing Se.”

“When were _you_ in—”

“Shut up.”

Zuko shuts up.

“You were running around with the Avatar’s friends. I guess the Avatar too,” Mai adds. “It was two weeks before the eclipse. I’m not an idiot. If your sister found out anything I knew, you’d be branded more of a traitor than your uncle.”

He winces at the word _branded._ Mai doesn’t have it in her to care.

“You didn’t tell Azula—?”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t know you anymore, Zuko, but I don’t want you dead.” Mai takes a step back as Zuko looks away, wilting like a fire lily in a monsoon.

“The punishment for treason is banishment,” Zuko mutters as if he’s thought this through. “I know how to handle that.”

“You really think your father would let you run off into the sunset.” Mai sighs. She carefully reins in the urge to say _At least you’re pretty._

“I guess it’s a good thing it doesn’t matter now,” Zuko bites. His eyes snap back to hers and he shows his teeth like a cornered hogmonkey.

“I guess so,” Mai agrees viciously.

“Fine!” he shouts, which is stupid and not a response to anything she said.

“Whatever!” Mai shouts back, equally stupid but too angry to care.

For a single, dizzying second, she’s angrier than she has ever been. It makes her vision fuzzy at the edges, the wave of rage at this boy who seems to do his best at every turn to goad his own father into killing him.

Zuko _knows_ what the Fire Lord did last time he spoke out against any part of the war. He _knows_ how half the nobility and well more than half of the military—at least those of enough rank to matter—feel about the loudmouthed little prince who left in disgrace and came back under suspicious circumstances. Zhao was a bully, Mai has heard, but he wasn’t an exception.

Like most emotions strong enough to overtake her, she smothers it efficiently until it dies.

By the time Mai has chewed and swallowed the screaming rant she’s more than earned by now, Zuko is in the middle of storming out with characteristic drama.

At least he uses the door.

* * *

Word comes an hour after sunrise.

“Prince Zuko.” Naoki bows. “The Fire Lord will see you today.”

He tries to thank her. The words stick in his desert-dry mouth.

Today, he takes his meals in his chambers. There is work to do.

* * *

The red insignia on the curtain that cuts the Fire Lord’s throne room off from the rest of the palace parts under Zuko’s hands. He makes the journey from doorway to appropriate speaking distance at a precise clip.

“Prince Zuko,” the Fire Lord greets from atop his throne, behind his wall of flame.

Zuko presses his forehead to the hard, cold floor.

Footsteps ring through the empty throne room. They are the echoes of another moment, days ago: the same man and the same boy and the same distance between them. Zuko rises from the kowtow up to his knees. The Fire Lord continues to speak.

“It has been a busy time cleaning up the mess from the _invasion,_” he spits the word as if saying it leaves a sour taste. “Rebuilding defenses on the plaza, handling unruly war prisoners…”

“War prisoners?” Zuko twitches. His mouth presses shut in a firm, pale line.

“Mhm,” the Fire Lord hums disinterestedly. “Nothing you should concern yourself with. How have these last three days treated you, Prince Zuko?”

“Well, father,” Zuko answers obediently.

Rich, red silk whispers against the floor. The Fire Lord paces around Zuko like the rising and setting of the sun.

“Many of my generals thought you would be away for the rest of your life. Have they given you any trouble?”

“No, father.”

“Hm.” He stops in front of Zuko, hands clasped behind his back. “I see you brought your swords, as requested. Show me.”

Zuko unsheathes a single blade. He holds it up to the Fire Lord, who takes it without so much as brushing against his hand.

“Where did you get this?” the Fire Lord asks. The blade’s colors seem to waver in the firelight, inconsistent and shadowed by his body between it and the flames.

“In—” Zuko speaks as if running out of air, “Chung-Ling. Fire Fountain City.”

“Fascinating. The metalworkers there are unparalleled. I’ve never seen a weapon like it.”

He hands the sword back to Zuko. It rejoins its twin in the sheath.

“Father,” Zuko says, head bowed, “I need to speak to you about something.”

“I see. Rise, Prince Zuko. You can speak to me on your feet.”

Zuko stands.

“In my travels,” he begins slowly, “I’ve seen much of the world, particularly the Earth Kingdom. Its people are proud and strong. They can endure anything as long as they have hope. But the Fire Nation has taken that hope away.”

“Yes,” the Fire Lord nods. “Make your point.”

“They—Father, the war hurts everyone.” Zuko stammers as he goes off script. “Not just in the Earth Kingdom, but here in the Fire Nation. There was a town on a river, a factory polluted it so badly that a spirit attacked the army. And it wasn’t an isolated incident. I was at the North Pole when the Ocean Spirit defeated the navy. The war makes men like Zhao believe they can do whatever they want. He killed the _Moon_. It isn’t just people, even our people. We’re throwing the entire world out of balance!”

The word _balance_ echoes dimly off the pillars, the floor, the ceiling so high above it vanishes into darkness.

“What,” the Fire Lord asks, as unmoving as his own royal portrait, “is your suggestion?”

Zuko’s pale throat bobs.

“Peace,” he says. “The war has to end. You can end it.”

The Fire Lord begins his slow, circular pacing again. Zuko turns his head as far as he can to watch him pass. For a moment, he vanishes behind Zuko’s head like the sun behind the moon before his peripheral vision finds him.

“Do you know why I sent your sister to find you and your uncle after your failure at the North Pole?”

“She—” Zuko flinches again. His head falls and his eyes land on the floor. The Fire Lord’s long, red robes slither across his vision. “She said I was an embarrassment.”

“Yes,” the Fire Lord confirms. “However, the problem was Iroh. He has always been weak, but to actively impede the greatest investment of military resources since his own defeat, what should have been the immortal victory of _my _reign, made him a traitor. ”

Zuko’s unscarred eye grows as wide as a heavy Earth Kingdom coin.

“You knew—? The Moon Spirit—”

“Your uncle has gotten to you,” the Fire Lord sighs. His orbit ends directly in front of Zuko. “It truly is a disappointment. I had hoped you could manage to last a full week.”

One of the Fire Lord’s hands lunges out in a wide arc. A band of fire flashes briefly between him and his son. Zuko stumbles back. An arm shields his face.

“_Guards!”_ the Fire Lord snarls. Armored boots shout with every step in contact with the polished stone floor as six imperial firebenders fill the space cleared by flame a moment ago. “Prince Zuko has made an attempt on my life to usurp the throne.”

“No, no, I—” Zuko straightens from the half crouch he fell into after cringing from the fire. As he takes in the line of guards between himself and his placid-faced father, he grits his teeth with a pained grunt.

He draws his swords.

Two guards rush him first, a pair of guandao extended in front of them. Zuko sidesteps, twists an arm around one and kicks the other out of the guard’s hands. A third guard gets behind him as the first two find their feet again. The heavy wooden pole strikes Zuko across the back. A startled grunt bursts from his throat.

Another guandao swings down toward Zuko’s head. Its blade turns bloody red with reflected firelight. He raises his swords, crossed, ready to catch the blow.

The blow comes with a crash. A violent shudder runs down Zuko’s arm as the pink, black, and silver sword in his right hand cracks down the middle. The left takes its damage at another angle and shatters utterly, three pieces of metal spinning away on the floor before the harsh sound of it can reach the wall and echo back.

Zuko blinks in disbelief at the jagged stump jutting from the handle.

It hits the ground alongside its twin and the rest of its body when the last two guards twist Zuko’s arms behind his back. They force him to his knees.

“That,” says the Fire Lord, “is the value of loyalty. Remember it, Prince Zuko, if you’re ever lucky enough to see the sun again.”

* * *

“She says she’s sick.” Ty Lee wrings her hands. “Do you think we should bring her some soup?”

“She isn’t sick,” Azula scoffs.

“Well, how do _you _know?”

Both girls freeze at Ty Lee’s tone—too sharp, skeptical, un-Ty-Lee-like. Azula’s amber eyes narrow; her mouth twists.

“I—” Ty Lee stammers.

Azula relaxes. Her face turns to a pleasant smile, as quick and unexpected as her lightning.

“You’re right, of course,” she laughs. “Here I go again. We can get mochi without her for once, and we’ll see her as _soon_ as she feels better.”

“Great! Great plan.” Before Azula can take her arm, Ty Lee flips onto her hands.

She will happily tell anybody who asks that she does it for two reasons: for fun, and to keep in practice. This move is risky, because it risks revealing her third reason—but if now isn’t the time to avoid eye contact with Azula, there will never be one.

Ty Lee makes cheerful upside-down conversation and hopes, desperately, that Mai knows what she’s doing.

* * *

Prince Zuko has been in prison for three days. He is on his seventh escape attempt.

On day one, the count reached two: he sawed through one and a half metal bars with a fire dagger; he faked a choking fit in front of an unconvinced and unimpressed guard.

The warden ordered him moved down a level as punishment. In the Tower, the more troublesome the prisoner, the further they were kept from the sun.

Day two alone contained four separate near-escapes: on the way from his original cell to the lower, darker floor, the prince swept the legs out from under both guards flanking him and took off down the sloping hallway, caught only for the fact that he ran in the wrong direction and into the guards’ breakroom; in the shackles around his wrists, he concealed a prong kanzashi, presumably pulled from the hair of an off-duty guard in the struggle during escape attempt number three and used—unsuccessfully—as a lockpick; he faked a second choking fit in front of a slightly more gullible guard, who had been warned ahead of time of this royal eccentricity; the prince rammed himself into the wall, dislocated his own shoulder, and squeezed between the bars of his enclosure.

He lost the privilege of having a window in his cell after this.

Day three was less eventful. The prince only made one attempt at escape: when his breakfast was delivered, he grabbed the guard by the wrist, broke three of the man’s fingers, and was only stymied by the two inches between the ring of keys on the guard’s belt and the prince’s own reaching fingers—presumably, his dislocated shoulder did not help.

This act sent him to the cellar.

The lowest cells in Capital City Prison Tower are deep in the mountainside, dark as the bottom of the ocean, and cold as a winter typhoon. While the Prison Tower lacks the infrastructure of the Boiling Rock to artificially cool its chambers for those who earn solitary confinement, the warden of the Fire Nation’s oldest continually-occupied prison believes in a simple fact: sometimes, the old ways are still the best.

The natural chill of a bare stone hole in the ground and its petrifying darkness are anathema to a firebender’s primal desire for sunlight. She has yet to see a prisoner last more than half a day before breaking, pounding on the door and vowing good behavior.

As of this moment, Prince Zuko has been in the cellar for eighteen hours.

“You,” Warden Rangi snaps at the guard, whose helmet wobbles when he jumps in surprise. “Tell me why the prisoner is still in the cellar.”

“We—” He swallows visibly. “We were under orders not to let him out until you were here, ma’am.”

“I seem to recall your orders were to alert me as soon as he said anything.” She glares at her subordinate. He’s fresh meat, if Rangi remembers correctly—combat injury, shipped here from the front lines. Honorable discharge and reassignment. She makes a note to burn his former commander’s topknot off for the glowing recommendation, if this is how he follows orders.

“We did,” he says. “I mean, what I mean is, he hasn’t. Said anything.”

“Nothing?”

“Not since I got here, ma’am. When I relieved her, Shizuka said she didn’t hear a peep all night either.”

Rangi stares at the heavy iron door of the cellar as if she might burn eyeholes to the other side with enough concentration. The cellar has broken assassins and traitors before, she’s seen it: bigger, more experienced men and women than the prince. Stronger firebenders, too, if the rumors of his shameful lack of skill are to be believed.

“Who has been delivering his meals?” Rangi asks.

“Um,” he stammers, taken aback by the seeming shift in topic. Slow on the uptake, too, she notes. “Kudo, mostly. And Ruan, but he’s been out since the prin—_prisoner_ broke his fingers—”

“Get Kudo for me,” Rangi orders. “Now.”

The guard puts a fist to the heel of his hand and hurries away. Rangi takes a slow, meditative breath. The Prison Tower holds many of the highest-profile prisoners in the Fire Nation, those whose importance necessitates they stay near enough the Caldera for observation and who are less than likely to receive shortened sentences for good behavior.

A Fire Nation citizen in the Tower means lifelong imprisonment. Rangi believes in her work. She believes that everyone under her watch deserves a life of indignity for their crimes against the nation. And any life, inevitably, ends.

She has been the warden of this prison for decades. Prisoners die. She has even watched it happen a time or two. But Rangi is a _warden._ There is honor in that.

She is not an executioner.

A set of even footsteps approaches behind her.

“Ma’am,” Kudo’s voice greets. Rangi turns around.

“When was Prince Zuko’s last meal?”

“Breakfast, yesterday,” Kudo responds, “but—”

“What?” Rangi snaps at the hesitation. Her staff usually know better than to stammer when she asks them a direct question.

“He hasn’t eaten.”

“Since breakfast?” Rangi narrows her eyes at Kudo’s nervous paleness. “Say what you mean.”

“He hasn’t eaten at all. Since he’s been here.”

“Nothing?”

“He—” Kudo stutters again, “there were the bits of food he pretended to choke on, and he could have eaten some rice. I wasn’t counting the grains—”

Rangi turns to the door again, trying to miraculously invent a new firebending trick to feel the prince’s fire of life through solid metal. She catalogues his last few days: multiple athletic escape attempts; sustained, concentrated flame in a fairly advanced bending form; stress from a self-inflicted shoulder injury; eighteen hours in a hole in the ground.

“How old is he?”

Rangi knows he’s young, but he was banished for years and already a teenager when that happened. She can hope he has, at least, finished growing. Her nephew recently gained three inches in six months and had nearly eaten Rangi’s sister out of house and home by the time he was done—not uncommon for a growing firebender.

“Sixteen, ma’am,” Kudo answers promptly, the first acceptably disciplined response she’s gotten all morning.

In her younger years, Rangi had a bad habit of gesticulating when she talked. Coupled with a teenager’s lack of control, it resulted in more than one incident of accidentally scorched eyebrows among her friends and siblings. It is only the discipline of decades that stops her from throwing a demanding finger into the guard’s face and, more than likely, lighting Kudo’s hair on fire.

“Open this door.”

Zuko is cold, but he has been colder. Zuko is hungry, but he has been hungrier. Zuko is in pain, but he has been in much, much more.

The plan isn’t a good one. Even he knows that, but Zuko has become accustomed to making impulsive choices and handling the fallout. An idea either works, or it causes enough of a shift in circumstances that the opportunity for a completely different impulsive choice presents itself sooner or later.

So far, the only change has been the steady movement to deeper, darker cells. The same problem, over and over, increasingly worse.

The iron door creaks open. Zuko goes limp. He hears a quiet curse echo against the stone walls.

“Check his breathing.”

A set of footsteps approaches.

There are two of them. He expected a heavier guard, given his recently-acquired jailbreaking habit. Then again, it’s a surprise they’ve come to check on him so soon. Zuko was prepared to pace his breathing for another few hours, at least. That first guard didn’t seem to care at all about his near brush with choking to death.

Or maybe Zuko is just a bad actor.

The footsteps come closer. Zuko inhales, flips onto his back, and spins. The move is familiar, though strange to do with only one working arm. A wheel of fire follows his feet and blooms outward. The guard in the cell yelps and scrambles away.

It’s good to have his firebending back. He tries not to think too hard about how or why.

Zuko finds himself upright again. The blank darkness of the cell is broken by a rectangle of light, cut awkwardly by the open door. He runs.

He stops—is stopped.

A jolt of pain shoots through his right arm, which has been nothing but dead weight and dull pain for well over a day. The shock ripples through him like a spasm. He stumbles straight into the other guard, standing just outside the doorway, her hand still extended from her strike to Zuko’s shoulder.

“You could have at least waited until we got you to the infirmary,” she says. Her tongue clicks in admonishment. Her fingers dig into the aching arm in her grip.

“I’ll remember that,” he grunts, “for next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.” Her eyes are cold in the torchlight.

“What—” wheezes the guard Zuko bowled over, stumbling up behind him, “should we do with him, warden?”

_Oh._

The warden’s eyes never leave Zuko’s face. He clenches his jaw.

“Put him back upstairs.”

“But—”

“Go.”

This isn’t his original cell. For one thing, the bars are intact.

It’s on the same floor, though. The window over his head lets in the midmorning sun, casting the room in an ambient golden light at odds with the old, dark stone beyond Zuko’s cage.

Breakfast comes. Two guards enter: one carrying the tray, the other there as protection in case Zuko goes off like a teenage firebomb again.

He feels bad about that last man’s fingers. Only a little, but still.

The guard sets the tray down and pushes it into the cell with a short club. They literally handle him with a pole, like a rabid, wild animal. It isn’t as if Zuko hasn’t earned that, but the act is no less dehumanizing.

He’s made them afraid of him.

The door shuts with a heavy finality. In the dazzling light that bounces off the metal bars, Zuko sees flashes of other faces. Wide, grey eyes in his chambers, that first day he found the Avatar. Boldly painted faces still expressive enough for rage and fear on Kyoshi Island.

Toph, her pale face and pale eyes in the dark, saying _We’re not afraid of you anymore._

Zuko doesn’t try to escape today. Instead he eats, and sits, and thinks.

* * *

“What about Zuko’s uncle?”

Aang tilts his head to peer up at Toph, her face upside-down above him from where he’s lying on his back. She has said surprisingly little while knocking him over with rocks all day.

“What about him?”

“He could teach you firebending.”

Aang floats to his feet, hoping distance from the ground hides the way his heart does a sudden, nervous backflip.

“Zuko said he’s in Ba Sing Se,” Aang argues. “We can’t just fly back now, it’s occupied by the Fire Nation.”

“So is the Fire Nation,” Toph says, crossing her arms, “and we’ve spent plenty of time there.”

“But—” Aang glances around as if a perfect argument for why they can’t go chasing after Zuko’s uncle, who will _absolutely_ ask what happened to his beloved nephew, will be written on the temple walls. “But you hate Ba Sing Se!”

“You need a firebending teacher!” Toph pokes him in the chest to punctuate every other word.

“I’m still working on earthbending.”

“We’ve been _through this.”_ The temple floor cracks and rumbles when Toph slams her foot down. “What are you so afraid of? What’s your _problem,_ Twinkletoes?”

“What’s _your_ problem?” Aang shoots back reflexively.

“I don’t have a problem, except for the fact that you can’t go five minutes without running away from anything that hurts your little feelings. We all miss Zuko! Just because you blame yourself for him getting captured doesn’t mean you get to get all mopey when there’s a war to win and a Fire Lord to take out!”

“I don’t blame myself!” he shouts, and freezes like a statue when he realizes what he’s said—when he realizes Toph will know it’s the truth.

She opens her mouth but nothing comes out. For the first time ever, Aang thinks he might have rendered Toph Beifong speechless.

It’s obvious she isn’t happy about the fact. Her brows come down tight behind her long fringe of hair, mouth twisting in anger.

“Then I’ll do it for you,” she spits. Stone shifts under Aang’s feet—she’s gotten good, after so much time teaching him, at knowing how to throw even an airbender off balance. He lands hard on his backside. Toph towers over him once again. “We’re done here.”

“Toph, wait—” Aang watches her go. He slumps forward with a groan until his forehead knocks against his knees. “Monkeyfeathers.”

* * *

Azula visits the other war prisoners first. The girls with the silly facepaint and the sillier fans have been here since Ba Sing Se. They were fun to taunt at first, but ever since Azula had their leader shipped off to the Boiling Rock to rot, it just hasn’t been the same. _She_ was the only one with a spine; the rest just mope and glare as if their silence gives them dignity.

Nobody has dignity in a prison this filthy—except Azula, of course. She’s dressed for the occasion: favorite hairpiece polished and secured in her topknot, formal armor, lipstick checked and rechecked.

Not that she cares about impressing the war prisoners. They’re just the opening act.

The man missing several of his fingers and even more of his eyebrows broke easily enough; Azula moves on from his cell without a glance. The one who barely fit through the door and needed six guards to hold his arms back is younger than he looks; Azula suspects the other prisoners don’t know this, so she tucks it away in case it becomes useful. The backwater waterbenders haven’t shut up since they were brought in, with one exception: the man who invaded the Fire Nation while wrapped in seaweed like a giant, living sushi roll. Azula’s lip curls as she passes his cell, where he sits, as he has for days, with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. He still refuses to wear pants.

The Water Tribe warriors are worth pausing to consider, for a moment. There is a man with scars almost as deep as her brother’s—the thought makes Azula smirk—all up and down one arm. He’s inseparable from another warrior, and the rest seem to look to the two for guidance. She has yet to work out which is in charge, but once she does, he will be shipped off immediately. She certainly won’t let both out of her sight _together._ She’s not a fool.

They know how to put up a stoic front, though. Azula will give them that much. They go silent and still at the first sound of footsteps.

She stops in front of the scarred man’s cell. He doesn’t look at her.

Azula watches him in silence. He wants her to speak first. He’s waiting for it so he can push back stubbornly and find the limits of her patience. He won’t. None of these pathetic excuses for warriors will. Azula’s patience stretches further than the horizon. It weighs down these prisoners until they have no choice but to break first. Don’t they know they’ve already lost? The only thing left to do is give up.

She walks away. The spiral slope of the prison’s floor winds down to the lower levels.

Speaking of the foolish refusal to give up, Azula opens the door to her destination. It is a lovely day for a family visit.

“He’s a wild one,” the guard in the hall warns her. Azula smiles.

“I think I’ll manage.”

She steps inside and shuts the door.

“What do you want?” her brother growls immediately.

She smirks. Even after all these years, she still overestimates him. Oh, well. This will be easier than she thought.

“Why would you assume I want something, Zuzu? Maybe I just felt like visiting my favorite brother today. How are you feeling? Is the food to your liking? I’m afraid I don’t know how they do it in the Earth Kingdom. Let me know if you’d prefer a little more dirt in your gruel, and I’ll tell the cook right away.”

Zuko grunts through his teeth. He lays down on the stone floor of his cell and turns to the wall like a child pretending to be asleep.

Azula sighs as if he’s won this round. This is her performance. It requires an attentive audience.

“The truth is, Zuko,” she says softly, “I need your help.”

His shoulders stiffen. The right one, without his weight on it, barely moves. Azula tucks that away for later.

“What?” he asks the cold stone wall.

“You were right when you said the war needed to end. Father doesn’t see it, but I do.” Azula steps closer to the bars, closer to her poor, lonely brother. “I have a plan.”

Zuko sits up. He turns to look at her over his shoulder, though he makes her face his bad side. Azula nearly laughs at the gesture. As if his scar is intimidating to _her,_ and not a reminder of his failure. Of how he can never succeed at anything, even treason.

“It’s simple, really,” she says in the voice she used to use when they planned simple, honest schemes together. When she was young enough to look up to her big brother, to mistakenly assume he had anything worth her time. “Though Fire Lord Sozin prepared his first strikes decades in advance, he never made a formal declaration of war, nor overwrote the tenets of governance. He just hid them with the Fire Sages. The old laws are still in place.”

“How do you know all this?” Zuko shifts to face her fully. Always curious, her brother, and never tempered by enough suspicion to keep him from getting burned.

“You think you’re the only one who’s gone poking around dusty corners of the palace?” Azula softens a smirk into a smile of shared conspiracy. She presses on before he can think about the lie too hard. “There have always been legal ways to remove a Fire Lord from power.”

“Agni Kai,” Zuko whispers hoarsely. Azula represses the urge to roll her eyes.

“That’s one,” she nods instead. “I’m good, Zuko, but not good enough to best father. But there’s another way.”

When mother would drag them to the clownish players on Ember Island as children, there would always be a moment right before the action—a fall, a fight, a death, a kiss—where Zuko would tip practically off his seat, hands braced against the wooden railing of their private box above the stage, breathless and wide-eyed.

Mother had the same look, worn down by age and poise. Azula never felt whatever it was that overcame them. It was obvious how the play would end from the first scene. Half the time, the actors _told_ them before any of it transpired.

Regardless, and despite his best efforts, Zuko has that look to him now. Azula had always wondered what would happen if she pushed him right over that railing. She’s finally going to find out.

“By ancient tradition, there is one person who can declare a Fire Lord unfit to rule. It hasn’t been done in centuries.” Azula smiles, not unkindly, at the irony. “That’s why I need you, Zuko. You’re the only person still alive who has ever managed to catch the Avatar.”

Before he showed up in the wake of the invasion, having slipped past her with a boy who was supposed to be dead, honor regained and making an unprecedented nuisance of himself, Azula’s brother hadn’t managed to surprise her since she was four years old. Now, he has the gall to do it twice in a week.

His face slams shut like the metal door of his cell.

“You—” His voice spikes from a whisper to a shout in the span of a single syllable, then stops dead. He closes his eyes and breathes in deep. “You almost had me. No.”

At least she can drop the act. He’s no fun anymore, really.

“It was worth a try,” she laughs with a flick of her hair. “I’m going to find him anyway, you know. And Uncle. I don’t suppose you’d be more willing to cough up wherever his royal kookiness has hidden himself, would you? It would save me some time.”

Zuko leans back against the wall. He winces when his shoulders make contact with the stone, but not a sound escapes him.

“Really, Zuko.” She crosses her arms. “Stop acting like a child for once.”

Nothing.

“I don’t have to put up with this, you know. Unlike some people, I’m free to leave.”

He rolls his neck and seems to find something very interesting in the late evening sunbeam crawling across the floor.

“One word from me and you’re locked in the cellar,” she spits.

“Why do you think I’m alive, Azula?”

A silent second passes.

“Is this about what dad always said?” She inspects her nails, the picture of boredom. “I was born lucky, you were lucky to be born. If you’re trying for pity, you’ve already earned more than your fair share.”

“No,” Zuko shakes his head. Matted, greasy locks of hair fall over his face and his cheekbones cast shadows over hollow cheeks like a naked skull, but his eyes are bright and intense in the dim light. “Why do you think I’m alive right now? Why didn’t father have me killed, or do it himself?”

“The usual punishment for treason is banishment, Zuko. You’ve already demonstrated that you just can’t be responsible with what you’re given.” Azula shrugs. A smirk pulls at the corner of her mouth. “I’m certain it’s only a matter of time, once you outlive your worth.”

“You know that’s a lie.”

“Excuse me?” Azula narrows her eyes. Is Zuko… _smiling?_ What gives him the right?

“I figured it out, finally.” His mouth is a thin, dry line in his face, but still he manages to smile around the words. “I outlived my worth the second I spoke out against him the first time. He’s been trying to get rid of me for years. So why not do it when I _really_ became a traitor? When I showed up alongside the Avatar? Why am I alive?”

He asks his infuriating, cryptic questions the way their tutors used to ask the same thing in four different ways when they were children, only it was always Zuko who didn’t understand, _Zuko_ who needed the extra help, the prodding, the patronizing tone. Azula doesn’t know what to do with a question she can’t answer.

“I’m sure we can fix that easily enough,” she says coldly.

“You know why,” Zuko continues as if Azula hadn’t spoken. The sconce on the wall flares bright blue. “He’s holding me over your head because of the Avatar. Because he’s alive, after you told the whole world you killed him. You failed.”

“No, _you_ failed!” Azula shouts.

The firelight suddenly filling the room illuminates Zuko’s face. It erases the hollows of his dehydrated cheeks and dark under-eyes until he looks flat and corpse-blue.

“I did,” Zuko agrees. “Over and over. I know how to get back up.” His smile twitches into a smirk. “Do you?”

The torch on the wall settles back into its usual orange flame. The shadows return. They hide her brother’s traitorous face. She inhales fire and exhales his poisonous words.

“I hope he _does_ let you live,” Azula snarls, “so you survive to see us burn your precious Earth Kingdom to the ground.”

_“What?”_ Zuko’s voice breaks. Good. She’s back on the high ground where she belongs. She reminds herself that he is still in the dirt, half-buried.

Azula laughs. She turns to the door, savoring the final image of her brother: pale, shocked, filthy. Lost.

“Have a nice few weeks, Zuzu. Better luck in your next life.”

* * *

He has to get out of this prison. He _has to._ No more excuses, no more room for failure.

Granted, Zuko thought the same thing from the first moment his knees hit the cold stone floor and a lock slammed shut behind him, but this time he means it. This time, there is more at stake than his own stupidity. Azula, Father, the Earth Kingdom, _a few weeks,_ Sozin’s Comet—

_You never learn,_ he berates himself, curled around his useless arm with a hand buried in his matted hair. _One mistake after another, worse and worse and now the entire world is going to pay for it._

That’s not true. Zuko can give himself that much credit: he learns slowly and painfully and never all at once, but he learns. He thinks he has learned more in the last six months than the rest of his life put together. He thinks, now that he knows better, that this is only the start. Now that he’s looked up from his myopic view of his own life and history and _honor,_ whatever that means, the whole world laid out in front of him, and as long as he remembers to walk through it with humility, he will never stop learning.

This is the true honor. Or it would be, if he could get a decent look at any part of the world but this grimy stone hole.

Zuko inhales. His chi stirs within him, lighting like tinder in his stomach and up, out the throat. His breath of fire tastes like jasmine tea.

A sound outside his cell breaks Zuko out of his thoughts. Someone is coming down the hall—shift rotation, maybe, but no. He has a good sense of time, and the guard doesn’t change until just before dawn. Zuko shifts forward, ready to leap to his feet.

The heavy door swings open. In the dim, nighttime torchlight of the hallway outside, a heavyset figure in guard’s armor stands silhouetted.

“What do you want?” Zuko snaps. No one comes to his cell between mealtimes, apart from Azula’s single visit. _One word from me…_ he recalls her voice, a threatening hiss. “What are you doing here? My sister sent you, didn’t she?”

The figure closes the door behind himself.

“Answer me!” Zuko barks.

A sigh comes from behind the helmet’s visor, slightly muffled and metallic. Familiarity sends the tension bleeding out of Zuko before his mind has consciously registered why.

“It is a shame they don’t make these in a larger size,” says the man. “I’m not as trim as I used to be.”

He tugs awkwardly at the haidate of his armor before lifting one hand to take off the helmet and cups the other in front of his chest. A warm, golden flame springs to life in his palm. Light runs up the length of a well-kept gray beard, over cheeks softened with age, up to a pair of smiling eyes.

Zuko melts against the far wall of his cell. His head feels buoyant, lighter than air. Even the constant ache in his shoulder seems to fade.

“Uncle?”

“Shh.” Uncle Iroh lays a finger to his lips and winks. He bustles to the iron lock. Zuko can’t see what his hands are doing after his small flame goes out, but a moment later the door to the cage clicks and swings open. “Up, up, let’s go,” he urges.

“Uncle,” Zuko croaks, already on his feet. “How—? When—?”

“There will be plenty of time for questions,” he assures Zuko, half pulling him out into the open area of the cell. His hands land on Zuko’s shoulders in a brief, questioning pat. Zuko winces at the pressure on his right, but the comfort of Uncle’s touch is too great to give up for the sake of a little excruciating pain.

Uncle frowns.

“You’re injured,” he observes.

“My fault,” Zuko says wryly. “Now can we _leave?”_

Uncle makes breaking out of prison look easy. Zuko guesses maybe it would have been for him too, if he’d kept a level head for once.

“The exit is that way,” Zuko hisses. He knows well enough, because he bet wrong on _those_ particular odds during his third escape attempt.

“We have a brief detour to make first,” Uncle says, the very picture of calm. “Now hush.”

Zuko grumbles wordlessly under his breath. Irritation and worry compound with the deep throbbing in his shoulder, the furthest he’s walked under his own power since his injury, but layered over it all is a sense of rightness_._ Part of him wants to say something inane about _old times_.

Another part of him wants to start shouting when they wind up in the _laundry room._

Uncle dumps a filthy uniform on him and offers a hand in getting dressed. Zuko bats him away with his working arm.

“Look _away,_ Uncle, I can dress myself.”

Two minutes of struggle later, Uncle gently suggests that _time may be of the essence._ Zuko growls and lets him offer a shoulder to lean against as he pulls on his new pants. The shirt, he needs an extra pair of hands to wrangle on. A great deal of his focus is spent on not shouting every time his right arm shifts, after all. A little help from others can be a great blessing.

Everything after that is tense but largely uneventful. Long story short, they steal a war balloon.

“Few people would call our nation peaceful,” Uncle sighs, forearms folded and braced against the side of the balloon’s basket, “but the view from up here…”

Zuko looks over the side. The Caldera shrinks behind them like a clawed hand scraping at the sky. Lights all up and down the side of the volcano blink and glimmer, a web of sparks and life. Falling away from the city’s centrality are the hills of Capital Island—strong and huge and heavy like the heart of a lionturtle. Once, before the oldest person the oldest person alive has ever met was even a thought, this island was four separate islands. This far above, Zuko can trace the narrow inlets that mark where molten rock melded the disparate pieces together.

“Anything’s peaceful from a thousand feet in the air,” he says.

Uncle hums thoughtfully. Wind ruffles his beard and ripples through his hair. Zuko looks at him, looks away, looks back. He shifts an inch closer, and Uncle must see it and understand. He steps away from the side of the balloon, not looking at Zuko but perfectly positioned to receive the one-armed hug he throws around Uncle’s shoulders.

“Thank you,” Zuko mumbles into Uncle’s shirt. He feels the sting of tears in his eyes, running down his face, soaking into the thin cloth. It’s a good kind of stinging, like cleaning out a wound, and he doesn’t think Uncle minds so much anyway.

A hand gently cups the back of his head. Uncle returns the hug, warm and solid and too much of a relief after so much uncertainty for Zuko to let go even when the pressure screams through his injured shoulder. He must feel the wince, though, because he pulls back.

“Let’s take a look at that arm.” It’s easy to see how Uncle led thousands on an impossible quest, easy to understand why those thousands of people packed up and went home willingly the moment their general’s heart broke.

“It’s my shoulder,” Zuko says as Uncle herds him down to the floor of the basket, back pressed against the wall.

“It’s dislocated.” Uncle raises an eyebrow. Zuko responds with a sheepish smile.

“I maybe tried to break out a few times before you showed up.” He inhales sharply through his teeth as Uncle prods at the tender joint. “Didn’t work.”

“Mm.” Uncle hums low in his throat, a baritone note of thoughtfulness. “This may take some time, Zuko. Why don’t you tell me about everything I’ve missed since you abandoned the tea shop? And keep your back tight against the wall.”

“Um.” Zuko thinks back—it’s been little more than a month, but what a month it’s been. “I met the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe. Twice, actually. He’s nice. I spent some time with the Avatar. The Avatar was alive after all, by the way. He—”

Shame floods Zuko’s mouth. Uncle’s hands still.

“You’re getting tense. Calm down, breathe.” He breathes with Zuko for a few moments. The fire in the balloon’s burner flares and dims. “What else? Did you drink any good tea?”

His eyes twinkle as he says it. Zuko smiles, despite himself.

“Actually, funny story about that. I finally learned to brew spiced tea.”

“Really?” Uncle laughs.

“Yeah, it was—” He stops and goes tense again. “It was supposed to be a funny story, but it didn’t work out that way.”

Uncle nods as if he understands. He doesn’t, he _can’t,_ but no matter what Zuko knows intellectually, he feels understood all the same.

“Did you make new friends?”

Zuko watches the fire and its shadows dance over the metal wall of the basket. He tastes shame again, but at a distance. Other things come in through the cracks: Sokka’s quiet, confident boat repairs; Katara’s earnest, awkward kindness; Toph’s secret pai sho talents and blunt honesty; Aang, even, Aang, of course, with a tsungi horn in his lap and a gleam in his eye. He lets guilt and anger go, for just a moment, and stays instead inside the collection of in-between moments that proved peace was possible even in times like these.

A _“yeah”_ hangs off the tip of Zuko’s tongue. Uncle interrupts him quietly before it can fall with an apologetic, “This might hurt.”

It’s a good thing Uncle waited as long as he did, Zuko will think later, because if they’d still been within sight of the Caldera, Zuko’s scream would have alerted every guard in the city.

The second his shoulder pops back into its socket, the rush of pain halts. It feels like taking off the shoulder plates of his armor after wearing them long enough to get used to the weight. Two days of constant aching end with a sharp, numb silence.

The ache comes back again, but gentler. He tries to rotate his arm and gets a stern look and a hand around his wrist for the trouble.

“I’m making you a sling.” Uncle says it like a threat. He pulls Zuko’s balled-up, dirty prison shirt from the corner of the basket and begins tying it into knots. “Wear it, and don’t move that arm until you get it looked at.”

“Where?” Zuko scoffs. “I’ll be on every wanted poster in the Fire Nation by sunrise. No healer would take me in.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can figure it out. Isn’t a friend of the Avatar’s quite an accomplished healer?”

Zuko snaps his head up. Uncle has a too-innocent look on his face, eyes turned toward the stars. He’s practically whistling while he works on the sling.

“How do you even know—? Never mind.” Zuko slumps back against the wall. “There’s no way she wants to see me ever again. They all hate me, I know it.”

“I see.” Uncle finishes his makeshift sling, then scoots closer to pull it over Zuko’s head. Once the injured arm is tucked cozily inside, he stands and gives the burner another burst of flame.

Zuko stays seated. He rolls his head against the edge of the basket and stares out over the sleeping beast of the Fire Nation at night. The sky above the Caldera was clear, but as they fly, a bank of clouds rolls nearer and nearer. He nearly laughs aloud at his next thought: _At least we don’t need to worry about lightning._

But a storm is coming. He knows this, and Aang doesn’t. He knows how to firebend, and Aang doesn’t.

Or—he _knew_ how to firebend. The thought of trying again, here in front of Uncle, and coming up with nothing but a pathetic puff of smoke tightens Zuko’s throat. But better Uncle than anyone else.

Then again, Sokka, Aang, and Katara have seen his loss of power firsthand. Toph accepted it with understanding and even a suggestion, albeit a useless one for reasons she had no way of knowing. None of them mocked him for it. None of them really cared, beyond caring about how it made him _feel._

He looks up at Uncle, a steady presence and the only thing keeping them airborne.

“I have to go back,” Zuko says. “I need to find them again.”

The firelight flickers over Uncle’s face, a merry chaos. He can’t be sure, light and shadow dancing so close together, but he thinks he sees Uncle smile.

“Do you know where they might be?”

Zuko glances north. He remembers a conversation on a hill, a light in Aang’s eyes, talk of drafty hallways and banishment and fruit tarts.

“I think I do.” He looks back at Uncle and smiles. “Destiny is a funny thing. You told me that once.”

“I did.” Uncle nods. “Get some sleep, Zuko. After what you’ve been through, you need your rest.”

“So do you.”

Uncle laughs.

“These old bones have been resting for some time now. It’s good to get the blood flowing again. Sleep,” he insists.

Zuko wants to argue, but the moment he tries, his jaw cracks on an enormous yawn.

“Fine,” he concedes, then mumbles, “I wouldn’t be any help with the burner anyway.”

“What?” Iroh says, but Zuko is already out like a candle.

* * *

Iroh pours his nephew a cup of tea in a cave in the forest, fleeing charges of treason and chasing after the Avatar. It’s just like old times.

“I have something for you,” he says.

Zuko blinks with surprise. He was never pleased to celebrate his birthday while they were at sea; Iroh thinks the reminder of how much time had passed always put him on edge. Perhaps now, it is more that Zuko is unaccustomed to kindness, even the most performative acts of gift-giving.

That will have to change. For now, Iroh pulls the wrapped package from the basket of the balloon and hands it to his nephew.

“Uncle.” Zuko’s voice is thick and choked when he unwraps the paper around his new pair of swords.

“No nephew of mine is going off to face his destiny empty-handed.” Iroh smiles.

“Uncle,” Zuko repeats. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and asks, “will you come with me?”

“Oh.” Iroh’s heart sinks, heavy as lead, cold as iron. “No, Zuko. I have business of my own to take care of.” He forces a chuckle. “I am expecting some old friends very soon. I have to go back to Ba Sing Se.”

“But why?” Zuko fiddles with the strap of the swords’ sheath, crestfallen.

“You are not the only one with a hand in ending this war.” He flashes Zuko another smile, conspiracy.

His nephew’s face cracks open, astonished and—dare Iroh say it—proud.

“You mean…?”

“When I was a boy,” Iroh explains, looking down into his teacup, where he sees well over half a century of life in the swirl of its steam, “I had a vision that I would one day take Ba Sing Se. Only now do I see that my destiny is to take it _back _from the Fire Nation.”

“So the Earth Kingdom can be free again,” Zuko finishes the thought, and Iroh himself has never been prouder. “I understand.”

“I hoped you would.”

“But,” Zuko says, “someone needs to teach Aang—the _Avatar_ firebending.”

“You’re worried about your injury,” Iroh guesses.

“Oh.” Zuko glances at the sling around his arm as if he had forgotten it was there. “Actually, I have a bigger problem. I’ll show you.”

He stands and strikes a simple, beginner’s form. Iroh watches with a critical eye, but Zuko is careful not to jostle his injury. Then, he proceeds to perform the worst firebending Iroh has ever seen.

“I see.” Iroh strokes his beard as Zuko tersely explains his theory about the Avatar’s shocking lack of death taking away his fire. “You may be right. Fire is the element most susceptible to changes in motivation and spiritual turmoil.”

“So,” Zuko flaps his mobile arm in helplessness, “what do I do? How do I get it back?”

Iroh knows how Zuko _could_ get his firebending back. Unfortunately, it happens to be a way Zuko might, instead, get himself eaten by dragons. The suggestion would be risky—he had always planned to bring his nephew to meet the masters, though before a certain iceberg cracked several months ago he had assumed it would take years to get him ready.

Looking at the young man his nephew has become, Iroh cannot imagine anyone more worthy. Certainly, he is a more honorable man than Iroh was—oh, it must be thirty years ago by now. He should find out how little Ham Ghao is doing.

Regardless, caution is a wise choice in matters this delicate. He has sworn himself to secrecy, after all, and a man is only as good as his word.

“You remember the Sun Warriors?”

There are two things on which Iroh will bet his life: his own pai sho skills, and his nephew. This flip of a coin glints in the air like the morning sun.

“The first firebenders to learn from the dragons,” Zuko recites. “Their civilization wasn’t far from here. What? Do you think I should… poke around their ruins?”

“Sometimes the shadows of the past can be felt by the present,” Iroh says. He takes a long sip of tea as Zuko takes a moment to think over his words.

“What if I fail?”

Iroh feels a jolt of surprise until he realizes Zuko cannot be talking about the masters’ test. He means the war, his destiny, his friends. Iroh sets his teacup down.

“You won’t.”

“I’ve already failed. I’ve made so many mistakes.”

“Yes, you have.” Iroh nods. “But mistakes are not failures, Zuko. Mistakes are necessary to show you the person you have the power to become. If you let them be, they are your greatest strength.”

Zuko opens his mouth. He pauses for a long while. His eyes gleam, birds sing, leaves rustle outside the mouth of the cave.

“I really missed you, Uncle,” he says at last.

Iroh wraps Zuko in a hug. He feels no hesitation, and that is, perhaps, the greatest gift he can remember receiving.

“I missed you,” he says, “and I will see you again.”

* * *

“Aang?” Toph kicks at the ground. “Can I talk to you?”

“Uh, sure,” Aang says awkwardly. She feels a little bad, asking him to talk in front of everyone else, but it’s the only way she could think of to stop him from running off again. They walk across the open courtyard. Aang sits on the edge of the fountain. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t your fault—”

“Toph, you don’t have to apologize. The thing is… The truth is—”

Toph gasps.

“Wait.” She shifts her feet, practically trembling. It can’t—

“But—”

“Shut up, Aang. Hey!” Toph shouts toward the rest of the group, eating lunch and chattering about something useless and inane and _not this_. “Everybody! Get over here right now!”

“What is it, Toph?” Katara is the first to follow her voice, and Toph could run up and hug her if her feet didn’t feel like they were stuck to the earth. Sokka follows, then Haru and the Duke start helping Teo into his chair, but Toph doesn’t have time to wait because she needs her seeing friends for once.

For the first time, Toph can’t trust her own feet.

“I—” Toph points. Appa trundles out of the way. Her insides burst into four square feet of frantic mothbats at the sound of Katara’s gasp, because that’s the moment she knows it’s true.

“Hello,” he says with a little wave. “Zuko here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for any wild inaccuracies when it comes to treating a dislocated shoulder! I'm erring on the side of "they should realistically all have at least 3 concussions based on what happens in canon so i can get away with the kids being cartoonishly sturdy" Also, NEVER try to set a dislocated joint on your own. If you find yourself in that situation, seek medical help immediately. I'm choosing to believe Iroh would have some knowledge of treating injuries like this because 1. he was a soldier and a general who saw a lot of violent conflict and 2. the dude just kind of seems to know everything. Also, desperate times, etc.
> 
> Let me know if I am leaving out any glaring errors. I should be going to sleep but instead I am updating because I wrote 3.5k words after work today and I won't stop for God or money right now.


	7. Old Friends That Don't Want to Attack Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a long time coming! For my ongoing readers: I apologize for the unexpected 2 month hiatus. I ended up cutting this chapter in half, and then cutting that half in half. I gave myself too much plot to deal with—who could have foreseen this? For those of you keeping score, you've probably noticed the chapter count increase from 8 to 10. My plan right now is to have two more chapters and an epilogue.
> 
> For anyone in the future reading this all at once: consider this your authorially-mandated break time. Get a snack, drink some water, use the facilities, unclench your jaw. It's been a long ride, and we have a ways to go yet.
> 
> Thank you to everyone reading! I never expected this fic to gain so much attention, and I'm honored by every last bit of it. Stay as safe as you can, stay home if you can, stay well. I love you.
> 
> Chapter warnings: injury, upsettingly vivid descriptions of the inside of a human body (no gore, just bloodbending stuff), interpersonal drama, dramatic irony.

Toph is the closest of them all, and that makes Zuko nervous.

Not that Katara isn’t a deadly and capable fighter, and not that Sokka’s boomerang couldn’t easily brain him at this distance, and then there’s Aang, fully within his power and within his rights to sweep Zuko’s feet out from under him and send him tumbling into the gorge—he’s a sweet-tempered kid, but the last time they saw each other bodes far from well if anything could find the edges of his temper, and that’s not even considering the other kids from the invasion—

“Zuko!” Katara cries. Before he can move, three bodies have crossed a dozen feet to wrap their arms around him in a group hug that rivals even Uncle for enthusiasm and iron grip. Zuko nearly topples under the combined weight.

“How did you find us?”

“How’d you escape?”

“Are you hurt?”

“Were you followed?”

“You had us _worried,_ Sparky. Don’t do that again.”

“I—” Zuko opens his mouth. The three faces grinning madly at him pull back. He thinks there might be tears in Katara’s eyes.

“Aang told us what happened,” she says.

“He—” Zuko looks up. He realizes that Aang is distinctly _not_ part of the group hug. The Avatar hangs back, watching his friends intently. “He did?”

Grey eyes meet Zuko’s. Whatever is going on in that gaze is too big and too complicated for him to parse. Aang’s knuckles are white around his staff.

“He said you did some _sweet_ firebending trick against your dad.” Toph bares her teeth proudly.

“And that you were captured,” Sokka says. “What happened after that?”

“Uh,” Zuko croaks feebly. Nothing he sees or hears makes sense; he wonders if maybe that night in the cellar really did get to him, and everything since then has been a dream. Probably not, he reasons dizzily—his shoulder still hurts, and pain in dreams usually wakes him up.

Only usually, though.

“He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it right now, Sokka,” Katara scolds. She turns to Zuko with a worried crease in her brow. “You look terrible. Have you been eating? Oh! What happened to your arm?”

“I dislocated it.” Zuko looks down at the sling around his right arm. The group hug jostled it, but in the grand scheme of pain it barely registers. Katara’s hands hover worriedly around his elbow.

“Sit down,” she says, guiding him toward the edge of a fountain. Zuko’s feet follow without his brain’s permission.

“How’d you get hurt?” Sokka asks, hovering as obviously as Katara but trying and failing to hide it.

“Trying to get out of prison,” Zuko answers reflexively. All he can manage is the truth right now, unembellished. He doesn’t have the capacity to think up reasons or excuses. Aang’s presence feels like a chain around his throat.

“Did you reset this yourself?” Katara starts rolling up his sleeve and wraps a glowing handful of water around his shoulder. The cool, soothing touch of it startles him.

“My uncle did. He got me out.”

“He’s back in the Fire Nation?” Toph pipes up.

“He had to leave. He said—” Zuko swallows a mouthful of something he can’t name. “He’s going to free Ba Sing Se.”

“Wow.” Toph whistles lowly.

“You’re lucky you didn’t tear anything,” Katara scolds gently. “I think it’s just inflamed. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Zuko answers honestly about his shoulder. His stomach makes itself known with an angry grumble, answering the question about the rest of him.

“The Fire Nation starves its prisoners, huh? Should have known.” Sokka practically sprints to the fire. He comes back a moment later with a bowl of rice and berries. Zuko dimly recognizes them as coming from a breed of bramble bush he fell into on his way to the temple the last time he was here.

The memory stings. He’s still too hungry to pass up the offer, though. Zuko shovels food into his mouth and hopes nobody asks him any more questions until he can turn his head rightside-up.

Footsteps and the creak of wooden wheels alert Zuko to the approach of the other three. The tallest is Haru—encounters as awkward as their last meeting have a habit of sticking with him. He can’t remember the names of the other two.

“Guys,” Sokka says, “this is our friend Zuko. Zuko, this is Haru, Teo, and The Duke.”

“Hi,” says Haru.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” says Teo. “It’s nice to finally meet.”

“Yeah,” The Duke concurs.

“Hello.” Zuko has the vague idea of waving politely, but he has nowhere to set down his bowl and he doesn’t want to find out what Katara will do if he even thinks about moving the injured arm. He settles on a small attempt at a smile and a nod.

“Duke,” Teo says, abrupt and stern, “don’t eat that.”

Zuko blinks, glancing at the kid standing beside Teo’s chair, but he’s not eating anything and Teo isn’t looking at him. He’s looking, instead, toward Zuko but a little to the left. He wonders if maybe Teo is also blind before he feels a soft brush of feathers against his left arm.

“Oh.” Zuko stares as the hawk, _his_ hawk, pointedly ignores Teo and starts pecking at Zuko’s rice. All he can do is let it happen. He’s distressed, again, by his lack of a free arm—he wants to pet the bird’s head. His eyes sting, though he can’t figure out why.

“Sorry,” says Haru with obvious embarrassment. “These two gave the hawk a new name.”

“It’s Duke,” The Duke chimes in.

“You can change it if you want,” adds Teo.

“No,” Zuko says. “Duke is… it’s good. I mean, it’s better than Hawky.”

He dares a glance at Sokka, whose lips cinch in mild irritation over top of a bitten-back grin. He aims a pat at Zuko’s right shoulder, until Katara clears her throat pointedly with a muttered _“Healing, here.”_ Sokka redirects it into an awkward clap on the left instead.

“It’s good to have you back, buddy.”

Zuko shifts his gaze to Aang. He stands as still as the temple’s statues and twice as tall in Zuko’s eyes. Everyone else deserves the truth, but Aang must have lied for a reason. Zuko won’t betray him—not again.

Slowly, finally, Aang looks at Toph, then back to Zuko. Eyes wide open, moving like an ancient tree in the wind, he nods.

Every inch of Zuko’s body is tender and weak. His lips are so chapped he feels one split open when he smiles, but that doesn’t stop him. For once, nothing does.

“It’s good to be back.”

The minute he can slip away unnoticed—with how distracted everyone is, it’s not a long wait—Aang grabs his glider and goes.

There are a handful of places in the Western Air Temple that can only be reached by flight. Toph could probably find him if she tried. The whole place is stone, after all, and it would take her five seconds to build a bridge that defies all previously-understood laws of architecture. But she’s the most excited of all of them to see Zuko again. She won’t come looking for a while, if at all.

Aang touches down on the deck of the Avatar’s shrine.

It’s a small structure, hanging from the underside of the cliff like all buildings that make up the temple, tucked away on the southern end. He takes a deep, calming breath before crossing the threshold. Aang has learned to lay down his expectations when he sets foot in places he once knew—the Air Temples most of all.

None of the temples have been what he expected. Beyond the bodies preserved by the altitude and climate back home, beyond the fountains belching smoke and cold pipes cutting out faces from sacred murals in the north, even Guru Pathik’s stewardship of the Eastern Air Temple couldn’t restore what was lost.

Air Temples were supposed to be social places: meant for sharing wisdom, teaching children, and providing a place where you knew you could go to be among your own people. There was plenty of solitary contemplation too, but nobody ever achieved enlightenment without understanding the paths others walked first. The Eastern Air Temple was physically intact, for the most part, and as clean as any place exposed to the elements could hope to be. But it was empty.

The Western Air Temple is a lot like it.

Aang enters the shrine. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the small, dim space. The first image to resolve itself is a portrait of an Air Nomad woman. She has faded with time, but less so than other murals Aang has seen in the temple. Refuge from sunlight and rain must have preserved her.

He steps closer. In the same wordless way he once recognized Roku, Aang knows this is his most recent fellow airbender in the Avatar cycle. Her name eludes him, but the kindness in her eyes and the small smile gracing her face feel familiar.

Stubs of candles line the walls. Aang wishes he could light them. Maybe if Zuko hadn’t lost his bending weeks ago, if Aang had been braver about asking to be taught, if Zuko hadn’t—

Aang inhales. He holds it for a few seconds, then lets the air flow out of him. He sits on the floor of the shrine, facing the image of his past life. He finds her eyes and holds them.

He is angry. He is confused. He is hurt. He is worried about what he should do, what will happen if he makes a choice, what will happen if he doesn’t. Aang identifies all these emotions, one at a time. He lets them come. He lets them go. In, then out, just like breathing.

Sound carries easily in the valley. He hears Katara’s voice in the distance. Not worried, he doesn’t think, and not calling his name, so he doesn’t have to go back just yet.

Voices ring through the Western Air Temple—something that hasn’t happened in a century. It has been empty for a long time, yes, but right now it isn’t. Right now, the temple is a refuge. It’s a place of learning, too, especially since Toph started swapping earthbending tips with Haru. It’s a place they have all come to be with the people they trust.

Not airbenders, but still Aang’s people.

It’s a place for children: the only safe place in the world right now. Aang mourns the necessity of it—an echoey ache for the fact that the eldest of them is barely old enough to grow the mustache he’s so proud of. It feels like a thought that belongs to someone else, someone familiar but older, looking at him from a great distance with pain and pride.

He stares into the serene face of the portrait—Avatar Yangchen. Aang remembers her name.

“You have a bird on your head.”

Zuko glares at Sokka. The effect is dampened by the fact that he has a bird on his head.

“He missed me,” Zuko replies.

Zuko, Sokka notices, hasn’t moved from his seat at the fountain where Katara started on her newest patient during lunch. They usually split into smaller groups or do their own thing in the afternoons—training, bending, exploring, they’re a busy crowd.

Maybe Zuko doesn’t know where he fits yet. Plus, he can’t exactly train with his arm like that.

“Yeah, well.” _The bird isn’t the only one._ Sokka thinks about saying it, but he hasn’t quite figured out how to be earnest with Zuko.

It’s a skill he’s picked up without noticing in the last few months, emotional honesty. Aang and Katara have a habit of forcing it out of him at the least convenient times, and Toph stopped putting up walls—for the most part—around the time Sokka figured out how to wriggle his way under them.

Zuko is something else entirely. He’s like a hungry owlkitten that hisses when you get too close. Coupled with Sokka’s own slowness to trust, he doesn’t know yet how vulnerable it’s safe to be when it’s just the two of them.

Sokka drops down next to Zuko, exhaling a long breath as if he’s too exhausted to stay standing.

“You haven’t missed much,” Sokka says without preamble. He draws his knees up and leans back onto his hands. They sit together on the edge of the fountain, near the edge of the temple’s platform, on the edge of the world.

If the world had an edge, anyway. But it doesn’t. It keeps going, all the way around and eventually back to where it began—that’s easy to forget, when the end seems close enough to fall right off of.

“Really?” Zuko doesn’t turn to look at him—bird, head, he gets it.

“Nah.” Sokka waves a casual hand. “Aang, Toph, and Haru have been throwing their rocks. Teo’s done a wheelie down every ramp in the temple. Honestly, it’s been pretty boring without you.”

An affronted squawk bursts from Duke’s throat. From the corner of his eye, Sokka catches the jolts of—surprise? Maybe?—that runs through Zuko’s whole body, displacing the poor bird on his head.

Sokka frowns. If the guy is this shocked by the fact that he’s part of the group, that his absence had an impact on the rest of them… Well. Sokka resolves to be a little nicer to him, if the opportunity presents itself.

Duke hops off Zuko’s head, falls to the ground with signature chaotic, asymmetrical flapping, and scurries off to the other side of the courtyard. Sokka is impressed. He didn’t know the land speed of a hawk was quite so fast.

Sokka relaxes his tensely casual posture. He puts his feet back on the ground and braces his arms against his thighs. Might as well do this now.

“Look,” Sokka says into the empty spaces of the temple rather than to Zuko’s face, “about the invasion.”

“Sokka—”

“Let me get this off my chest, okay? Here’s the thing.” He sighs, twiddling his thumbs. “It was my choice to leave when Aang came out of the bunker alone. And I would do it again. I know that makes me sound like a terrible friend—”

_“Sokka—”_

“—and it doesn’t really count as an apology, I get it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m—”

“Don’t,” Zuko grunts through his teeth. “Don’t apologize. Please.”

Sokka turns to look at him. Zuko has his legs pulled in and his head hanging down like he’d be holding it between his knees if he had the freedom of movement.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Zuko says slowly and carefully. His mouth crafts each word as if he’s decided to reinvent human language from the ground up.

“But I’m sorry anyway,” Sokka insists. “I know I made the right call, but I made a lot of wrong ones first. I don’t feel any worse about leaving you behind than I do about leaving the rest of the troops, but I can’t tell _them_ this yet. So I’m telling you.”

Zuko lifts his head. He stares at Sokka, wide-eyed and gaping like a beached whaleshark. His throat bobs.

“I—I’m—”

Before he can turn his stammering stops and starts into an intelligible sentence, Duke returns with a vengeance. He rams his tiny head into the side of Zuko’s leg with a chirp. A sharp little beak tugs at the fabric of his pants.

“Must be hungry,” Sokka chuckles. The hawk chirps once as if in agreement and runs away again.

“I should—” Zuko stands. He gestures toward the vanishing Duke.

“Sure.” Sokka nods. He smiles with a bittersweet mix of amusement at Zuko’s classic awkwardness and disappointment at his continued inability to handle an apology. At least he’s not angry.

That makes one of them who isn’t angry at Sokka. Fifty-fifty odds are better than nothing.

“Thanks.” Zuko turns away, stops, and turns back. “I missed you too.”

Zuko beats a hasty retreat after that. Sokka waits until he’s gone to start laughing. It’s only polite.

Zuko’s feet make the sound of aimless wandering. His wandering takes him straight to Toph. She’d say some junk about destiny if she cared to. Instead, she hollers as he passes the empty doorway.

“Katara give you time off for good behavior?”

Toph senses Zuko’s quiet snort of laughter. She wasn’t exactly listing the things she missed about him. That would be _embarrassing._ But if she had, his understated expressions of happiness would be high up there.

He stops, retraces a few steps, and hovers in the entryway like the awkward elephant-rhino he is.

“She needed a break. Healing is hard work, I guess.” He stretches his left arm over his head. His right is back in its sling.

“Hey, come here.” She pats the ground next to herself. There’s a narrow bed in this little cell, but she prefers direct earth-to-Toph contact. Zuko might not, and he’s free to sit wherever he wants. If she can still boss him around at this point, that’s his own fault.

She hopes he sits close, though. Toph isn’t lonely, exactly; it’s her own choice, hanging out alone inside the temple. She’s comfortable with the healthy weight of stone on all sides. Aang, Sokka, and Katara usually stick to the open courtyard, which probably has to do with their months of nothing but camping.

Then again, Aang doesn’t even use a sleeping bag. She’d put money on him always having been an _open to the elements_ kind of guy. Appropriate, Avatar-wise.

Either way, it means most of the temple is up for grabs when Toph needs a minute to hear herself think. Not that she’s ever completely alone in a place like this, carved into the cliffside with the kind of care for the earth that makes it practically a natural extension of the rock formation.

Haru is currently spending his afternoon practicing the small, precise earthbending he has such a talent for. He could make a killing as a juggler, though to Toph’s knowledge the job market for circus performers in tiny mining towns isn’t exactly thriving.

Teo rolls his chair back and forth the way Sokka jiggles his leg when he’s thinking, hands sure on the wheels and tilting them a foot forward, then back. He’s sitting in one spot outside the Hall of Statues. If Toph remembers correctly, somebody mentioned a mosaic depicting the flight of airbenders on the wide stretch of wall thereabouts.

The Duke is taking a nap, helmet cradled in his arms like a stuffed platypus-bear, in the juncture between the shoulder and neck of one of the massive airbender statues on the eastern side of the temple.

Toph can sense every person in the place if she tries. Their vibrations ripple out from isolated pockets like the frantic heartbeats of rabbit-squirrels hidden in their nests underground.

Zuko’s heartbeat is as strange, as too-fast as it ever has been. She’s not sure if she just got used to it as they traveled together and feeling it again is startling for its temporary absence, or if he had finally found some semblance of balance until going to jail messed him up again.

She can’t exactly ask _What’s wrong with your heartbeat?_ so Toph settles on the offer of company instead.

As if he can read her mind, Zuko makes a wordless compromise when he sits down. He doesn’t take the patch of floor she slapped her hand against, but he doesn’t choose to put the distance between them that taking the bed would entail. He sits across from her, face to face, cross-legged.

Toph mentally shakes herself. Obsessing over sitting-position is _nobility_ stuff. That’s not her, not anymore.

It’s not Zuko anymore either. But he would know it as surely as she does, and habits like that are hard to break.

“What’s up?” Zuko’s casual question breaks Toph out of whatever twisting tunnel her thoughts have been digging. A warm, weighty fondness settles in her chest. She grins.

“Just sad I can’t punch you ‘til Katara fixes your arm. I owe you payback for that stunt you pulled, Sparky.”

His heart starts bouncing off the walls.

“What?”

“Hey, relax. I didn’t mean to—” Toph sighs. She digs her thumb into the gritty floor, sweeping a dozen tiny pebbles along its arc like iron shavings to a magnet. “I missed you.”

“Oh.” Zuko’s heart thuds one more time before settling into what passes for normalcy with him. “Sorry.”

“Stop it.” Toph shakes her head. “It’s not your fault. I’ve already had this conversation with Sokka five times, okay? Azula was ready for us. It just wasn’t our day. It’s because of _you_ that Aang made it out alive, so stop beating yourself up, because that’s _my_ job.”

She punctuates her words by leaning forward and landing a gentle tap of her fist against his left shoulder. It’s not the injured one, but if anyone deserves her gentleness, it’s Zuko. He’s had plenty of the opposite.

“Fine.” Zuko turns his face away. His voice drops so low Toph barely catches it. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Toph leans back on her hands.

Silence runs deeper into the stone temple with every passing second. Toph used to appreciate the opportunity to be silent with Zuko, but she’s had too many silences this past week. This is the kind of quiet she wants to smash a hole in with her fist.

“So, did you get any prison tattoos?”

The question actually startles a laugh out of Zuko. Toph tallies her win.

“No.”

“Come on, I won’t tell Katara. Where is it? Did it hurt? I can’t see it, obviously, so you’ll have to describe it to me.”

“I didn’t! Stop, cut it out!” He swats at Toph’s feet with his free arm, fruitlessly attempting to stop her from poking him in the stomach with her toes.

He lets out a high-pitched yelp that tells her in no uncertain terms that she has succeeded in tickling him something fierce. Toph cackles.

“Aww, widdle baby firebender lost a tickle fight! What are you going to do? Burn my toes off?”

“When I get my bending back, I’ll—_ugh!_—definitely consider it.”

Quick as a rat-viper, Toph digs a heel into the base of his ribcage before pulling her feet out of his personal bubble.

“Still no bending, huh?”

“No.” Zuko shakes his head. “My uncle told me something I could try, though. It’s actually a lot like what you suggested.”

“About finding the original source of firebending?” Toph leans forward, intrigued.

“Sort of. The first firebenders were the dragons.”

“You’re going to go hang out with _dragons?_ Sweet.”

Zuko slumps forward. His left elbow braces him up against his knee.

“They’re extinct.”

“Oh.” Toph’s dreams of Zuko coming back with a pet dragon that would be even more terrifying to ride than Appa, but a million times cooler, dissipate.

“Yeah.” He shakes himself. “But the first people to learn from them were the Sun Warriors. Their civilization wasn’t far from here.”

“I’m guessing you’re not going on adventures in any ancient ruins with your arm like that.”

Zuko huffs a laugh.

“I guess I’m not. Katara said she’d give me another healing session after dinner. Hopefully, I get a chance to check it out in a few days.”

Toph almost opens her mouth for another lecture about their looming, comet-sized deadline. Aang wasted enough time flying off every ten minutes when they could have been breaking Zuko out of jail. Thank the universe for Uncle. At least _someone_ knows how to get things done.

But the rest of them were lucky enough to make it out with all their limbs in the right places. Zuko deserves some time to heal. To rest, even, for maybe the first time in his life.

So, instead, a different idea crosses the threshold of Toph’s mouth.

“You know, I heard the monks in this place were big fans of pai sho. There’s a table the size of Appa over that way.” She points to the northeast corridor.

Zuko snorts.

“Believe me, I know.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there. Want to tell it to me over a game?” Toph smiles cockily. “I know you’re probably rusty from your stint in the clink, but we have a while until dinner. That’s plenty of time for me to kick your butt.”

Zuko sits upright, all mopey thoughts of dead dragons forgotten in his instinctual fervor at the sight of a challenge.

“You’re on.”

The game draws a crowd.

The Duke stumbles across them first. Toph is pretty sure she woke him from his nap. It wasn’t on purpose, but earthbending twenty-eight stone tiles the size of her head at once out of their dusty stacks and onto a board isn’t exactly quiet. The Duke, despite having no idea how the game is played, becomes immediately invested in its outcome. Haru comes looking for him, Teo at his heels. Teo goes to get Aang, who brings Katara, whose brother comes sniffing around not long after, wondering where everybody went.

Toph, unsurprisingly, scores a greater share of the fanbase. The Duke, Haru, Sokka, and Aang gather at her side of the table, cheering and heckling their hearts out. Katara takes pity on Zuko. Teo seems genuinely interested in Sparky’s strategy, but he’s an outlier. Toph assumes being raised by a wacky inventor must do things to your brain.

“Flameo, Toph!” Aang says after one of her more brilliant moves.

“Stop saying that!” Zuko shouts across the table. “Nobody in the Fire Nation has _ever_ said that!”

“Maybe you should focus a little less on Aang’s slang and more on your defense. Kiss that northern mountain goodbye!” Toph blows Zuko a mocking little kiss, then curls her fingers. She turns the gesture into a forward punch. Her stone tile slides along the line to knock out his pagoda.

“Go Toph!” The Duke throws his fists in the air. Haru chuckles.

Zuko groans, head hanging dejectedly. Katara gives him a sympathetic little pat on the back.

“Hey, Zuko.” Teo leans over the board, pressing his hands against it to push himself up and get a peek at Toph’s side. Perched on the arm of his chair, the hawk chirps quietly. “Don’t you still have—”

“Up-bup-bup! No helping!” Sokka wags a finger at the opposition.

With a sigh, Zuko picks up the long, polished pole he has to use to push his pieces around, since he can’t earthbend them. This is an excellent example of why Toph has won over her fans and will eventually win the game: Sparky’s got no showmanship.

He rolls his wheel out of the lost mountain and right into Toph’s desert.

The other, less important reason she’s going to win is this: Zuko is really, really bad at pai sho.

“Oh no, what am I going to do now?” Toph clutches the sides of her face sarcastically. She twists one wrist forward as if skipping a stone. Three of Zuko’s tiles are hers in seconds.

“How—?” Zuko yelps angrily.

“I _know,_ right?” Aang chuckles. His laughter tapers off awkwardly and his heart does a weird little jolt.

Toph laughs. “I’ll beat you next, Twinkletoes. Don’t get jealous.”

“I can’t believe you convinced me you didn’t know how to play this game,” Zuko grumbles as he nudges his light spirit toward the center of the table.

Toph cracks her knuckles. Her stone tile barely has to cross three lines before the spirit is out of the way for good.

“Zuko.” Teo tugs at his sleeve. “I really think you should—”

“Boo!” The Duke shakes an emphatic fist at Teo. “Stop trying to cheat!”

“Don’t boo at him,” Katara says sternly. Her scolding is quickly drowned out by the rest of Toph’s coterie joining The Duke in a cacophony of boos and hisses.

“It takes a con to know a con, Sparky,” Toph says once the noise from her adoring public dies down. She shakes her head. “You’re just too honest. It’s sad.”

Zuko nearly drops the pole in his hand. His grip catches before it can fall to the floor, so she thinks none of her seeing friends notice the slip—but Toph worries. Being _honest_ of all things probably made him the black koala-sheep of his family even before he tried his hand at the whole treason thing. Toph wouldn’t joke about that right now, but she knows how cruelty makes for easy comedy.

Jokes are all about timing, after all. Considering who put him in jail a week ago, the timing is more than ripe enough that they both make the connection.

Zuko doesn’t acknowledge it. His shoulders are tight. The pole in his hand swings out to shove a random piece across the table carelessly, like he just wants the game to be over as soon as possible.

Sure, Toph appreciates grinding an opponent so thoroughly into the dust that they lose the will to live, but only when it’s _fun._

“Oh, wow,” Teo breathes. He braces his hands against the table again. Toph doesn’t know what he’s gasping about, they all knew Zuko was going to lose spectacularly—

Toph freezes. She shakes her head to clear it, presses the fingertips of one hand against the board, and feels her own eyebrows shoot so high they practically fly off her forehead.

“No way,” she breathes.

Behind her, Sokka and Aang gasp.

“Was that—” Sokka says in a strangled voice.

“What?” Zuko asks. He braces the pole against the floor and leans over the table himself.

“That’s what I was trying to _tell_ you,” Teo laughs. “You still had—”

“The white lotus,” says Aang.

In her head, Toph maps out the position of the pieces still on the board. She imagines every possible move her tiles have left to make—each one trapped in its own space, separated by the lotus’s ability to patrol the liminal areas between the mountains and deserts.

“Did I just—” Zuko slaps a hand to his own forehead in disbelief. He sounds like someone just shoved a fistful of waspgnats down his throat, confused and a little dry-mouthed. “Win?”

“Yes!” Katara cheers. “Zuko, you won! How’s it feel, Toph?” She asks smugly.

“You tell me when I wipe the floor with you next.” Toph sticks out her tongue. Across the table, Katara returns the gesture in kind.

“I think, traditionally, the next person plays the _winner,”_ Sokka points out. Toph can hear his stupid grin.

“Whose side are you on?” she snarls at the betrayal.

“I just go where the winds of fate take me,” Sokka says airly. He tiptoes daintily around the side of the wide table until he reaches Zuko, then throws an arm around his shoulders.

Zuko winces at the pressure.

“Sokka!” Katara swats her brother. “He’s still hurt, remember?”

“Sorry, sorry.” He backs off, then leans toward the board, rubbing his chin in that thoughtful Sokka way. Toph knows he’s reverse-engineering the entire game in his head.

“Hmph.” She slams a fist down onto the table. The tiles obediently reset themselves into the neat lines and even stacks of an unplayed game. She steps up onto the board, with a quick boost to her back foot by a short column of stone, and walks to the other edge, straight toward her opponent.

From this position, Toph is about a foot taller than Zuko, a swapped version of their normal heights. She stops directly in front of him. His heart does something weird.

“Good game, Sparky.” She pats him on the head like he’s a particularly clever poodlemonkey. “Get your arm fixed, and we’ll see if you can do it again.”

Laughter fills the room, a sudden burst of joyful sound after a century of silence. Toph may have lost the game, but she’s won her audience back. Zuko’s heartbeat meets the rhythm of it: still a little chaotic, but the kind of chaos Toph can happily live with.

“Rotate your shoulder for me.”

Sweat beads on Katara’s forehead. It’s a muggy evening despite the shade of the temple: deep summer near the tropics. She has never been this warm this often in her life. The fact that she can breathe ice crystals notwithstanding, it takes some getting used to.

Zuko obeys. He makes a better patient than she expected him to—not exactly Mister Patience, their resident firebender. But he’s been quieter than usual since his time in prison.

“How does that feel?” she asks.

“Good,” Zuko says. “It’s barely even sore. You’re a great healer, Katara.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You can expect some tightness in the muscle for a few days. But you’re right,” she laughs, “I am.”

Zuko smiles.

“Anything else?”

“Just one more thing,” she promises. “Hold still.”

Katara takes a deep breath, down into the core of herself where her chi ebbs and flows. The teeth of the ravine stand jagged between her and the moon. She can feel its presence nevertheless. She traces two fingers from the pale ridge of Zuko’s collarbone over the slope of his shoulder; the blood under his skin cascades like a thousand tiny waterfalls in unpredictable, branching lines.

Part of her wants to retch from how invasive it feels, despite the fact that the moon is not nearly wide enough for her to take hold of the water in his body. She can only sense it: every beat of his heart, every ripple it sends through his arteries, barely reaching the extremities before starting all over again.

Katara swallows her revulsion.

Little pockets like the sluggish sap in a tree; hidden rivers like a hot spring underground; a mass of water in constant, invisible movement, like the ocean—like the whole world. She spreads the fingers of her hand wide, seeking interruptions in the flow of his blood, pools where the rivers have broken their banks. Katara finds none. Over the site of his injury, Zuko’s blood flows cleanly through him.

She lets go.

“You,” Katara says with the tired sigh of a long day’s work, “are officially cleared for duty.”

“What?” Zuko blinks. The smile falls off of his face.

“For firebending.” Katara tilts her head. “With Aang?”

“Oh. Right.” His mouth twists into an awkward grimace.

“It’s okay.” Katara lays a reassuring hand on his newly-healed shoulder. “You’ll get your bending back.”

“Actually, my uncle had an idea about that. But I’m not sure if Aang will want to—It’s a long trip,” he explains. “A full day at least. And I don’t even know if it will work.”

Zuko slumps, elbows on his knees. With the dim evening light fading behind him, the paleness of his skin blends into the stone of the temple. His hair is loose and falls into his face. From this side, his scar hides behind the ridge of his nose. He looks less like the furious prince Katara first met than he ever has. He looks like he could be anyone in the world.

He could be. But he isn’t, and neither is any one of them.

“He doesn’t have much of a choice,” Katara says. She stands up, leaves Zuko where he sits, and marches into the temple.

Aang has to get over this fear of fire sooner or later. They have a world to save.

* * *

An early start, a flight perpendicular to the rising sun, wind in Zuko’s hair and patchwork pelts and cloth across the saddle underneath him.

The times aren’t nearly old enough to consider _old times._ That doesn’t stop the pang of nostalgia, the wish to return to a place long, long gone. Wishes like this have defined his life for—for a while. He wants to stop; he doesn’t know how.

If anyone would know, it would be Aang.

“So,” Zuko says, breaking their unspoken agreement to maintain mutual, stony silence. “Uh—”

“Tell me the truth,” Aang says.

Well. That’s fair.

“Okay,” Zuko agrees immediately.

Silence stretches out as far as the blue-white ocean.

“Did you have, I don’t know, a question, or—?”

“I don’t know, Zuko,” Aang snaps. He twists around in his seat on Appa’s head, eyes like chips of flint. “I’m thinking about where I should even _start._ Why did you stop me? Why did you let me escape the second you finally had me captured? Why did you bother pretending to be my friend if you were just going to—” Aang stops abruptly. He turns around again, stiff-backed, hands tight around the reins.

Each question stings, but the last one cuts like a sword to the throat.

“I wasn’t,” Zuko whispers. It’s the last thing he should say. He can’t justify himself; he doesn’t deserve to even _try._ But.

Aang still manages to surprise him, every time.

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“What? No.” Zuko scrambles to the front of the saddle. He hangs over the wooden prow of it as if proximity will fix whatever is broken in this conversation. “What are _you_ apologizing for?”

Aang glances back over his shoulder.

“I know you weren’t pretending.”

“Oh. Um, good. That’s good.”

“I’m just.” Aang sighs. “I’m trying to understand. Help me understand.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I don’t _care.”_ Appa’s fur ruffles as Aang lifts up on a swirl of air and spins around—it’s never stopped being uncanny, the way he moves so weightlessly, no thought put into the kind of grace that Zuko couldn’t emulate with a hundred years to practice.

He lands on his knees, hands braced hard against the saddle an inch away from Zuko.

“I don’t care what you think you deserve, or what you think somebody else wants from you, or what your destiny is supposed to be. I’m the Avatar, and I’m _sick_ of destiny!” Aang shouts in his face. “I just want to know why my friend did something that hurt me!”

“Well, why did you _lie_ to everyone about it?” Zuko shouts back. “You could have dragged this out of me a day ago! Why wait?”

“I asked you first!” Aang bellows. It’s such a childish response that it stops Zuko cold.

“I—” Zuko runs a hand through his hair, loose around his ears and sticking to the back of his neck as the sun warms the morning air. He sighs. “It’s complicated.”

“We have a long flight.” Aang sounds, of all things, a little pleading.

“Okay,” Zuko says. “Okay.”

He turns his face away from Aang’s and toward the sharp streams of sunlight washing in from the east. When Zuko looks out over the ocean, the world always seems bigger. Impossibly, incomprehensibly huge. On his ship, with a burning hole in his chest where he thought his honor was supposed to be, the size of it felt insurmountable.

He wasn’t entirely clueless back then, though not for lack of trying.

“Zuko?” Aang prompts.

“I don’t know why I did it,” he says. “Or, I didn’t know at the time, but now I realize why, and why I didn’t know, or didn’t let myself know, and when I drew my swords on you I wasn’t really thinking about all the reasons I told myself justified it later. Except I tried, I really did, only it got me thrown in jail, and Mai was right but I didn’t want to _listen_ to her and—”

“Stop.” Aang crosses his arms. “I’m starting to understand what Sokka means when he says he only catches half of what I say sometimes.”

“Sorry.” Zuko huffs a nervous, self-conscious laugh. “Now _I_ don’t know where to start. I don’t… usually get the chance to tell people. On my own terms.”

“You could start with the eclipse,” Aang suggests.

“Um,” Zuko shifts uncomfortably, “which part?”

“When we found your dad. He said—He wasn’t very nice to you.” Aang pauses with his mouth half open, then shakes his head. “No, it was worse than that. He said awful things to you, Zuko. And you still…”

Zuko blinks. His memory of the end of the eclipse is as vague and blurry as the hours with the royal physician after his first Agni Kai—though he’s been told the latter was due to the barrel’s-worth of medicinal herbs the man poured down Zuko’s throat to prevent infection.

“What did he say?” he asks.

“You don’t remember?”

Zuko shakes his head. “But I bet I can guess,” he says ruefully. “Something about Azula, right?”

Aang nods.

“And something about—” Aang bites his lip. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s _not._ He said you finally learned how to hold your tongue.” He pauses. “And that’s what got you banished.”

“Oh.”

Aang stares at him. Zuko can feel it, even as he looks away and lets sunlight sting his eyes.

“You said you’d tell me the truth,” Aang reminds him.

Zuko’s next words come out slow and thoughtful, a pair of adjectives he has never in his life earned nor seen the use of. He sees it now; he’s optimistic about this first step toward earning them.

“I told you this once, a long time ago.” The memory stings with shame, but only for the things that were his fault. That’s progress. “Our father always said Azula was born lucky. He said I was lucky to be born.”

“What?” Aang claps a palm against the crown of his shaven head. “That’s terrible, and—I would have remembered that!”

“You were in the Spirit World at the time,” Zuko shrugs. “I, uh, figure you were probably busy.”

Aang waves a _Fair enough_ gesture. He settles back against Appa’s head, legs crossed: the picture of an expectant audience. Zuko takes a deep breath.

“Three years, four months, and twenty-five days ago I was banished.”

The prologue comes in handy after all. Go figure.

Aang’s heart beats an implacable rhythm against his chest as Zuko spins the tale of his own personal tragedy. He’s heard parts of this before—a patchwork story which he now realizes wasn’t the half of it. Like a coin tossed and spinning in the morning light, Aang sees flashes of its other sides.

He knows a bit about what _honor_ means in the Fire Nation. Kuzon came from a family with no titles to speak of, not much in the way of honor to lose or to gain barring some incredible act of firebending prowess. Kuzon used to joke about challenging the local magistrate to an Agni Kai.

_Once I’m old enough,_ he always added.

A hundred years ago, Kuzon was the same age as Zuko the day his father commanded him to fight.

Aang realizes with a start that Zuko has stopped talking. They’ve been flying in silence for nearly a full minute. Apart from the gentle breeze brought on by Appa’s pace over the choppy waves, the air is still.

“Why didn’t you tell us about your dad before?” Aang asks. He winces at the expression the question elicits from Zuko—shame, that’s what it is. He can finally tell it apart from anger. The two look a lot alike on his face.

“I didn’t think I had to,” he says. Then, quieter, “I don’t think I could.”

“Why not?” Aang keeps his voice as gentle as the air around them.

“I spent my whole life feeling terrified of my father and thinking that was love. When I saw him again, I—” Zuko swallows.

“You hadn’t let that go yet,” Aang finishes for him.

“Yeah.” Zuko traces his fingers along the edge of the saddle. “It doesn’t excuse what I did. I want to say I thought he could be reasoned with, that staying in the Fire Nation would give me some—some power to fix it from the inside. But really, I just hoped he might still love me. If I did what he wanted. If I tried hard enough.”

Aang doesn’t know what to say. He sifts through what he knows about parents, never having had any himself. Gyatso was his guardian—protected him, helped him when he was hurt or confused, taught him everything he knew. That, Aang thinks, is what a parent is supposed to be.

That, Aang knows, is not Fire Lord Ozai.

“I was wrong,” Zuko continues with a firm, determined edge in his voice. “I know that now. Nothing I could have done would ever be enough for him. He’s cruel and dangerous and he needs to go down. I know I don’t deserve your friendship. It must be hard to trust me after what happened, but I want you to know—”

“I forgive you.”

Zuko’s eyes snap to Aang’s face, two gold coins of disbelief.

“What?”

“I forgive you,” he repeats. “You’re sorry for what you did, right?”

“Yes,” Zuko says.

“And you’re not going to do it again?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Then I forgive you. I just needed to know why.” Aang gives Zuko a tentative smile.

When Zuko smiles back in answer, it feels like every mile Aang has ever flown over rolling hills with the polished grip of a glider in his hands, every game of pai sho and meditation lesson with the chattering of lemurs and the laughter of monks in his ears, every night around a campfire with the people he trusts most in the world. He settles back on Appa’s head and takes the reins in his hands again.

“So why did you lie to everyone?” Zuko asks. It feels like falling out of the sky.

“Oh. Uh,” Aang rubs a hand over his arrow. “Everything happened so fast at the invasion. The troops got captured, Sokka and Katara were separated from their dad again… I didn’t want to give them any more bad news.”

Aang bites his lip as Zuko’s silence stretches taut, then finally snaps.

“That’s _it?”_

Aang turns around. It’s Zuko’s turn to stare—shocked and indignant.

“What do you mean?” Aang demands. “Yes, that’s it! Everybody was already in so much pain. It wasn’t a good time.”

“That’s the perfect time!” Zuko throws his hands out, gesturing nonsensically at Aang. “You can’t hide important information because you think you know what’s best for other people.”

“It wasn’t only for them.” Aang shifts uncomfortably. He didn’t come into this conversation expecting to be the one dredging up excuses. “I didn’t know how to feel about it. I still wanted to trust you, and I knew if I told the truth…”

Aang sends Zuko a sad, significant gesture with his eyebrows. Zuko blows out a long breath through tight lips.

“They’d never trust me again,” he says sadly, overshooting just a _little_ bit, if you ask Aang.

“Not _never._ But Katara can kind of hold a grudge, and Sokka thought _I_ was a Fire Nation spy the first time we met, and Toph—” Aang pauses. “Actually, I’m not sure how Toph would feel about it. But the good news is, we don’t have to find out just yet!”

He punctuates the news with a smile and a wave of his hands. Zuko looks unimpressed.

“You want to keep lying.”

“Look,” Aang says, channelling his inner Sokka and feeling guilty about it, “we have a war to end. I want to be honest with our friends, but maybe we could just… wait a little bit? You’re here now, so we might as well make the most of it. Right?”

Zuko purses his lips. With his arms crossed, his hair loose, and his shoulders up around his ears, he looks more like a cranky toddler than an exiled prince.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Fine. Yeah, I can do that.”

“Great!”

The wind in Aang’s ears muffles the sound of Zuko’s voice, but it doesn’t entirely hide the addition he makes under his breath.

“I can _totally_ do this,” Zuko whispers to himself, the world’s most unconvincing pep talk.

Aang doesn’t have time to worry about it—land greets them soon, and after that it isn’t long before the peak of a temple comes over the horizon like the rising sun.

The civilization of the Sun Warriors takes his breath away.

_Humility._

Zuko has taken an uncountable number of lessons in it over the last few months. He thought his life had been humbling enough; he thought he knew the word back to front like the shape of his own hands or the shape of his own scar.

A piece of the Eternal Flame flickers in his palms like a heartbeat. A people his history lessons had always insisted were a relic of the past beat their drums like the same.

He meets the masters.

_“I understand.”_

* * *

“Yeah, that’s a great dance you two learned there,” Sokka teases.

“It’s a sacred form that happens to be thousands of years old!” Zuko snaps.

“We’ll just tap-dance our way to victory over the Fire Lord.”

The fondness in Sokka’s voice—or maybe the answering fondness in Zuko, a feeling so startling in its familiarity that it hurts—cracks the last pillar of restraint in his chest. With a different truth burning through his body, there is no room for lies anymore. Aang will forgive him. He already has.

“Anyway,” Zuko segues awkwardly, “that’s not the only thing I wanted to tell—”

“It _is_ called the Dancing Dragon,” Aang supplies to collective laughter.

“Listen,” Zuko tries again.

“Is it time for breakfast already?” asks Aang. “I could really—”

“Hey,” Toph interrupts. “Zuko’s trying to talk.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Aang looks toward him. His eyes are heavy and full with the joy of yesterday’s discovery. Zuko looks away.

“You might all want to sit down for this.”

“We’re already sitting,” Sokka says, “but continue.”

“Um,” Aang says, “Zuko—”

“Please, Aang.” He takes a deep breath. Power in firebending comes from the breath; Zuko always feels bravest with a piece of Uncle’s advice in his lungs. “I’m so grateful to all of you for welcoming me back. But you deserve to know the truth.”

“Um,” Aang says again.

“When the invasion failed, I wasn’t taken with the other war prisoners. I went back to my father. I betrayed Aang. I betrayed all of you. And I’m sorry.”

For a long, silent handful of seconds, the temple is occupied only by statues.

Sokka rises to his feet.

“Yeah, I’m going to need to hear more than that. Explain. Now.”

His voice is calm, level, and just loud enough to carry. It worries Zuko more than if he were shouting.

“Well,” Zuko stammers, “I sort of told my father that I’d brought him the Avatar to fulfill the terms of my banishment. And then I held my swords to his throat.” He gestures nonsensically toward Aang, as if they’ll have forgotten who he’s talking about. Aang’s face is hidden in his hands.

“You _what?”_ Sokka twitches like he’s about to reach for his boomerang. “What’s the matter with you?”

“It was how I did it when I saved him from Zhao, so he would know I didn’t want to hurt him! But I didn’t think it through and he got away. I think I _wanted_ him to escape, but that doesn’t change—”

“You rescued him from Zhao?” Katara asks. Her eyes narrow, then widen suddenly, darting to Aang. “_That’s_ what you and dad were talking about, wasn’t it? The Blue Spirit.”

“Zuko’s the Blue Spirit?” Sokka yelps.

“What are they talking about?” Teo whispers to Haru. Haru hums a helpless _I dunno._

“I’m not explaining this very well,” Zuko admits.

“So you lied about being in prison?” Sokka raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“No,” Zuko says. “I was back for,” he counts quickly on his fingers, “three days. That was the soonest I could get an audience with my father. I tried to—I can’t believe how stupid I am—I tried to tell my _father_ that he had to end the war. Like I’d forgotten how well it went _last_ time I questioned his plans.” He huffs a sardonic laugh.

Nobody else joins in.

“Why? What happened last time?” asks Katara.

“Uh.” Zuko’s hand unconsciously twitches. He resists the urge to touch his scar. “I got banished.”

“Who’s Zuko’s dad?” The Duke whispers to Haru. Haru repeats his earlier sentiment.

“What? Did he banish you a second time?” Sokka’s eyes widen under his tight brows. He takes a sudden half-step forward. “Did _he_ dislocate your shoulder?”

“He told the guards I tried to kill him and threw me in prison. And, um,” Zuko turns toward Toph, who hasn’t said a word since his confession, “the swords you made me kind of broke. Sorry.”

She doesn’t respond. Her legs and arms are crossed, a closed-off posture he has never seen from her before.

“How’d your shoulder get busted, then?” Sokka asks.

Zuko’s attention snaps back to him.

“Oh, I did that to try and squeeze through the bars of my cell. It worked. Until I got caught again.”

“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” says Sokka.

“Well.” Zuko lifts his arms in a wide shrug as if to say _Remember who you’re talking to._

Sokka gets it, if his short laugh is anything to go by. He crosses his arms, seemingly done with his interrogation. The three newer additions to the group clearly have no idea what’s happening, he and Aang hashed this out two days ago, and Toph still hasn’t moved a muscle.

Katara looks up at him. Her stare is direct and hard as ice.

“Is there anything else you want to tell us, Zuko?” she asks, so carefully neutral she hardly sounds like Katara at all.

Zuko swallows.

“Only that I’m sorry. And I know I don’t deserve your trust, but I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you.” He looks from one set of blue eyes to another, then to the three pairs he hardly knows, then to the cloudy green set in a pale, stoic face. “I’ve been through a lot in the last few years, and it’s been hard, but I’m realizing I had to go through all of that to learn the truth. I’m here to teach the Avatar. To play my part in ending this war. I know my destiny is to help you—all of you—restore balance to the world. But anything else is your choice.”

Zuko punctuates the impromptu speech with a deep bow.

“Oh,” he adds, rising from the bow, “and thank you for taking care of my hawk.”

Sokka and Katara share a look. It’s a complicated series of quirked lips and shifting eyebrows, a conversation in a language no one else can speak or learn.

“Toph?” Sokka looks at her for confirmation.

“He’s not lying,” she grits out between her teeth.

“Glad we got that out of the way.” Sokka nods once. “Now what’s for breakfast?”

Zuko’s jaw drops as Sokka turns back to his sister, who turns around and resumes the process of chopping fruit, which their arrival interrupted. From the corner of his eye, he sees Aang’s head dart up in equal shock.

“What?” Zuko demands. Sokka looks back with an eyebrow creeping ever-closer to his hairline.

“Watching you two do your dance recital has me starving.”

“You’re not—? You’re just—?” Zuko’s hands open and close in confusion; he feels like they should be on fire. “I thought you would all be furious with me!”

Katara mutters something under her breath. Her back is turned and her voice bounces off the far wall, coming back garbled, unintelligible. Toph remains motionless. Haru and Teo share an uncomfortable glance. The Duke seems to have stopped paying attention altogether.

Sokka, apparently realizing he has to be the one dealing with this, exhales a long sigh. He stretches one arm and clasps a hand against the back of his own neck.

“All I care about is defeating the Fire Lord and ending the war,” he says with a shrug. “I can’t say I’m a fan of _how _you tried to do it, but you tried. That counts for something. And we can’t do this without you, so if you’re back on board with our plan, then I’m all for it.”

“I—”

Katara turns sharply.

“You’re sorry for what you did, right?” she asks, unknowingly echoing Aang’s question from two days ago.

“More sorry than I’ve been about anything in my entire life,” he says as easily as releasing a breath held too long.

“Then I’ll go along with whatever _Sokka_ thinks is right.” Katara turns back to her basket of fruit. An ice-knife slices an apple cleanly in half. Zuko winces.

“Can we eat yet?” The Duke cuts the tension of the moment just as easily.

“Seriously,” Sokka agrees. “Zuko, get over here.”

Zuko thinks he’s lost the ability to speak in complete sentences. The world is uncannily _off_ without the certainty of punishment hanging over him, as if the sun has suddenly risen in the west. He takes a wordless step toward the group—toward his friends.

The second he moves, Toph climbs to her feet. She walks away in a straight, unyielding line, directly through the stone wall dividing the courtyard from the inner temple. A Toph-sized hole opens and then resets itself with no evidence of any disturbance.

“What’s with her?” Sokka says.

A cold pit opens in Zuko’s stomach. At the same time, the world gains back a little of its lost justice.

Aang joins the gathered group for breakfast.

Zuko doesn’t notice when Katara’s eyes skim past Aang’s as she doles out the meal, too grateful to be included at all. Sokka doesn’t see when she skips over Aang in the rotation of who gets their turn to grab some fruit, too eager to nab some himself. Haru thinks nothing of it when Katara pointedly does not laugh along during Aang’s enthusiastic reenactment of their run-in with Sun Warrior booby traps, too busy chuckling with The Duke hanging off his neck like an overly-affectionate lemur.

Aang notices.

Katara knows he notices.

Aang notices that, too.

* * *

The boys are firebending. This is fine on its own. Duke knows people-fire won’t hurt her.

But it gets in the way of perching on _her_ firebender.

The-boy-who-feeds-her went away for a long time. The people who fed her after he left were not nearly as punctual with dinner, nor do they have the same sure, warm hands. They do not treat her with the confidence of a falconer, nor the kindness of a friend.

The smaller firebender always pets Momo gladly. Momo purrs and chirps with delight when the-little-firebender strokes his ears. Duke has tried to hop nearer and nudge his hand with her head to get in on being petted.

He always stops when she comes close.

Momo lands on the stone next to Duke. His head tilts at the firebending. His big eyes blink. The-little-firebender pushes a warm burst of flame from his hand. The-boy-who-feeds-her shakes his head. He mimics the motion and roaring people-fire heats the air.

Momo shrieks and scrambles off the slab of stone. Duke ruffles her feathers to catch more of the warmth.

The-boy-who-feeds-her makes fire differently than most other people. He makes it differently than he used to. People-fire has a common color palette: its reds and oranges are uniform. When Duke could fly, she knew how to recognize it from a mile in the air. A number of her commands relied upon the fact.

His fire has colors she has never seen in flame. If it weren’t for the fact that it bears a resemblance to fire in every other way, Duke would be as startled as Momo. These flames are warm; they move the way fire moves; they come from a human’s hands and feet and mouth. All normal, fundamental aspects of fire.

Licks of deep scarlet tint the edges of his flames. The honey-yellow of late afternoon sunlight pools in their hearts. When a wave of flame passes from his hands to the-little-firebender’s, Duke sees flashes of violet.

This is _her_ firebender. She studies his colors. She will learn to recognize them from a mile away.

Momo peeks over the stone. Duke swivels her head to look into his bulbous eyes. She demonstrates the safety of their perch by hopping a step closer to the firebending boys. Momo warily climbs back to her side. His tail wraps loosely around one of Duke’s legs.

The boys would never hurt either of them. People-fire isn’t dangerous, but Momo is unfamiliar with it. For some reason Duke cannot begin to understand, the people he is used to never firebend.

Fire flares and fizzles out between the boys. The-boy-who-feeds-her accompanies his firebending with loud sounds. The tone reminds Duke of how she used to receive commands. She stands at attention, but none of his words are familiar. He never commands Duke, probably because she can’t fly more than a few feet.

Although, the-little-firebender never commands Momo, and he can fly just fine.

Momo demonstrates this ability when part of the stone under his paws flies into the air. It does not break far enough to throw Duke off the same way, but instinct sends her flapping several feet away from the disturbance. She swivels her head, searching for the source of the explosion, and finds none. The stone perch attaches itself to a wall perfectly centered between the firebending boys, separating them. Duke is sure that wasn’t there before.

The boys stop firebending.

The-little-firebender chatters as frantically as Momo. The-boy-who-feeds-her stays silent. The-little-firebender leaves. As he goes, Momo presses the top of his head briefly against Duke’s wing before taking to the air to follow.

The-boy-who-feeds her holds out an arm. Duke takes the perch she _should_ have been offered hours ago, communicating discontent by gripping her talons into his sleeve and walking up the arm to his shoulder. He lets her.

His shoulder usually makes the best perch of all. Now, it is crooked and trembling as if the-boy-who-feeds-her is cold. Duke, having received plenty of warmth from his fire, nestles close until the side of her wing presses against his face to give a little bit of it back.

“Good, you’re here. Horse stance!” Toph sets her feet wide apart.

“I was _busy,_ Toph,” Aang says. “You’re the one who wouldn’t let up about me learning to firebend. Why’d you ruin my training session with—”

“Oh, _sorry,_ I didn’t realize you were a master earthbender already. My mistake!” She kicks one heel, shifting the rock backwards under Aang until he topples forward. “Oops.”

Aang looks up at her with an angry pout. Three small balls of air, one under each hand and another under his feet, hold him a few inches above the ground.

“Now that you’re here,” Toph continues, “we can get to the really fun stuff. I’ve been keeping you on the baby sets so far, but today you’re gonna find out how a _real_ earthbender moves a rock.”

“Toph.” Aang pushes down with his hands and coasts on the air up to land on his feet.

“What?” she snaps.

“I get that you’re mad at Zuko. But I think if you just talked to him—”

Toph blows her bangs out of her face.

“There’s nothing to talk about. And who says I’m mad at him? Maybe I’m just sick of his whining. _Oh, look at me.”_ She lowers her voice into a pantomime that sounds nothing like Zuko and waves her hands mockingly._ “I’m the banished prince. I forgot how to firebend. I’m so sorry I betrayed you all to the Fire Lord and ruined the invasion. Boo hoo, my hawk likes Teo better than me.”_

“I don’t think he’s said anything about Teo,” Aang says meekly.

“And then you two go off and dance with some dragons and suddenly firebending is so much more interesting?” Toph stomps closer, face an inch from Aang’s. “If I didn’t think a badgermole would get one sniff of you and pound you into tiny, airbending pebbles, _I_ could have done that.”

“Actually, I’d love to meet a—”

“You need to learn all the elements.” She pokes him in the chest. “_All_ of them. Earthbending means discipline! You can’t just run away when you see something shiny.”

Aang shuts his gaping mouth—_You’ll catch ladybirds that way,_ Gyatso would always warn him with a chuckle—and stares at Toph for a long moment. She stands as still and stubborn as a statue. With her hands on her hips, feet wide apart, Aang doubts any force in the world could knock her down.

“I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you,” he says. “And for what it’s worth, Zuko’s sorry too.”

For the span of a single blink Toph turns human again, with all the vulnerability that entails.

Then her brows fall tight over her eyes. Her face shuts like a metal door.

“Whatever,” she says. Her shoulder bumps into Aang’s as she stomps past him. “Go throw your sparks. I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do,” Aang murmurs as soon as Toph is too far away to hear.

He wanders back toward the temple. Zuko will assume Toph is training with him, and Toph won’t talk to Zuko to correct the assumption. He basically has a free afternoon.

A free afternoon, and way too much guilt to enjoy it. Aang sets off in search of his firebending teacher. Like Sokka would say, he has a Fire Lord to beat. Like Katara would say, he has a world to save.

Like Katara might say, if she ever decides to speak to him again.

Aang drags his feet, but he goes.

* * *

There aren’t any doors in the Western Air Temple. Toph still manages to convey the idea of slamming one open.

“You need to talk to Aang,” she says.

“Hello to you too,” Katara replies with what she thinks is a _very_ small amount of annoyance in her voice, thank you very much. She moves through the rest of this waterbending form and starts on the next one.

“He’s driving me up the wall with his moping.” Toph complains. “And it’s all _your_ fault. He only gets like this when you’re mad at him.”

“Oh, you want to talk about moping?” The water streams back into Katara’s waterskin with a flick of her fingers. “When’s the last time you were even in the same room as Zuko?”

Toph crosses her arms.

“Not the point.”

“It’s _exactly_ the point. You haven’t said a word to him in days.” Katara presses fingers to her temples, takes a deep breath, and takes a shot at the empathy she and Toph have finally developed with each other—all it took was one shared stint in prison. “I understand how angry you are, believe me, but we’re kind of on a deadline here. We don’t have time to be at each other’s throats.”

Toph’s laugh is loud and short and sharp. Katara scowls. Having honest conversations with the self-proclaimed greatest earthbender in the world without wanting to throw each other down a well was nice while it lasted.

“_We’re_ not on a deadline. _Aang_ is_._” Toph sets her closed fists on her hips. “What’s he going to say to the Fire Lord when the comet comes, huh? Sorry, your Majesty, but the Avatar can’t beat you up today because his waterbending master decided her hurt feelings were more important than the _fate of the world?”_

Katara stares at her own hands. They’re clenched into tight fists, too tense for waterbending. Earth or fire will bend to the will of a closed hand; water needs a gentle touch. _Gentle_ is something she’s only good at some of the time. It’s funny how kindness and violence can rely on the same set of skills.

“Why aren’t _you_ mad at him?” Katara asks at last.

Toph scoffs.

“Of course I’m mad. But we have more important stuff to worry about. Besides,” she adds with a shrug, “I’m not actually surprised. It was stupid, lying to everybody—lying to _me_—but it’s so Aang’s brand of stupid I can’t even blame him for it.”

“But that’s just like—” _Zuko._ Katara stops.

Understanding unfolds in her mind like a reverse-engineered origami cranefish. Toph was the first person to actually try to get to know Zuko. She probably thought she _did_ know him, better than the rest of them, even—not despite their lack of history, but because of it.

Nobody is exactly happy about what he did. But now that the initial shock has worn off, Katara can admit that it makes a certain sense. Zuko has always been impulsive, reckless with his own safety, and eager to fill a role in the world. Growing up as the Fire Lord’s son has clearly left him confused and hurt, a side he’s struggled with and habitually hidden behind violence in the past.

A habit Toph wasn’t around to witness.

Realizing she didn’t know him after all, that there were sides to Zuko the others had known a dozen times over before she even met him, must have hurt Toph as much as the betrayal itself.

But Zuko knows all this about himself. He’s _working_ to get better. That doesn’t fix everything he’s broken, but it matters that he’s apologized.

Aang hasn’t.

“Just like what?” Toph prompts crankily.

If Katara has learned anything about Toph over the course of their many, many fights, it’s that lecturing her when she’s in a mood like this makes everything worse. Unfortunately, Katara cannot count impulse control among her own virtues either.

“It hurts to be wrong about someone, Toph, but you’re not helping anybody with this behavior.”

Toph blinks. She digs a pinky finger deep into her ear and flicks away a glob of wax.

“Sorry, you want to run that by me one more time? _My_ behavior?”

“Yes.” Katara crosses her arms. “You’re getting in the way of Aang’s firebending, and we don’t need that.”

“Did you hear a word I just said?” Toph has the audacity to throw her hands in the air like she’s talking to a disobedient child. That’s rich, coming from someone so short.

“I haven’t gone _near_ his firebending lessons,” Katara snaps.

“I know! Because you haven’t gone near Aang at all, outside of throwing food at him like you really needed to get in some target practice.” Toph cocks her head pointedly. “How do you think that’s affecting him, Master Positive Teaching Experience?”

Maybe if Aang took a break from shooting flames out his nose long enough to say sorry, she’d be more helpful. Maybe if he ever bothered to practice his waterbending anymore. Maybe if he hadn’t lied in the first place. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Well,” Katara huffs, “maybe he’d be making more progress if you didn’t treat his firebending teacher like he’s dying of pentapox.”

Katara knows it isn’t fair, but laying the blame with Toph is easier than admitting she should be nicer to the boy who _lied to her face_ for a week. And Toph could stand to be more civil with Zuko—just look at Katara! She’s been nothing but gracious to him. It’s not so hard.

“Like he’s—?” Toph shakes her head. “That’s not a thing!”

“Whether it is a thing or not is beside the point,” she sniffs. “I’ll talk to Aang when you talk to Zuko.”

“Not happening,” Toph grunts through her teeth.

“Then I guess they’ll just have to get along without us for a while.” Katara nods once to punctuate her point. Toph cocks her head thoughtfully.

The only sound in this corner of the temple is the rush of wind—until Toph’s sudden laughter startles a flock of birds from their nests overhead.

“They’re doomed,” she says. Katara startles herself with a smile.

“It would serve them both right.”

Toph shakes her head, but this time a grin cracks the porcelain mask that her face has been for the last handful of days. Katara couldn’t say how many, and the realization that she’s been too caught up in her own anger to notice plucks a heavy chord of guilt in her chest.

“You know what, Katara?” Hearing a smile in Toph’s voice is as welcome as sun-warmed stone. The furious ice that holds Katara’s jaw tight melts at the edges. “You make an excellent point.”

* * *

Mai is perfectly aware that Azula has been reading her mail.

That part’s not a surprise. As soon as Mai was stupid enough to show any reaction at all to Zuko getting himself locked away, she knew the last few inches of the leash Azula keeps her on would jerk back. At the time, she didn’t care.

She still doesn’t, if she’s honest.

Her surprise only comes from the fact that Azula is being so obvious about it. Mai’s last three mail deliveries have each been over an hour late. In the Palace City, the palanquins run on time. Her mother always says that punctuality is the greatest mark of nobility.

Today, the princess has reached a new level of transparency. The wax seal on the latest letter is broken, not carefully remelted like the others. If Mai had the energy for it, she’d wonder what Azula’s game is.

It’s not worth speculating. She always finds out sooner or later.

“It’s from my uncle,” Mai sighs. She doesn’t hate his letters, but she forgets how dedicated he is to their weekly correspondence.

Being the warden of the highest-security prison in the Fire Nation affords him a great lack of time for anything approaching a personal life, but the man is still convinced he makes a better father figure than Mai’s actual father. The worst part is, he isn’t wrong.

She can only hope living in the colonies spares Tom-Tom a bit of his overeager influence. Regardless of how much he cares, she doesn’t want to imagine her brother becoming an even tinier version of him. The thought of a stuffed platypus-bear sitting behind bars while a toddler warden prances back and forth makes the corner of her mouth twitch.

“What does it say?” Ty Lee asks. She’s hanging upside-down from the dining room chandelier. The end of her braid tickles Mai’s nose until she bats it away.

“Nothing interesting,” Mai intones. It’s possible Azula left the seal broken out of sheer boredom. The letter couldn’t have even told the princess anything she didn’t already know. She sent that Water Tribe prisoner to the Boiling Rock herself, after all.

“What does he write to you about, anyway? I thought you said his job was his whole life.” Ty Lee flips rightside-up and drops into a chair next to Mai.

“It is.” Mai waves the letter apathetically. “So he writes to me about his job. Do you know exactly how many cells there are in the Boiling Rock?”

“Ooh, is this a game?” Ty Lee taps her chin. “I guess… three hundred and five.”

“Is that your final answer?” Mai asks.

“What do I win if I’m right?” Although the sun is fading in the sky, the chandelier hasn’t been lit yet. Ty Lee’s smile illuminates the room all by itself. Mai doesn’t know how she manages it.

“The house,” Mai deadpans. She gestures broadly to the tasteful wainscoting. “All this could be yours.”

“Wow,” Ty Lee laughs. “Then I better think carefully.”

“I’ll give you some leeway. Let’s say, get within a thousand without going over.” Mai glares at the dragon motif delicately painted along the far wall in agonizing yellows and greens. “I’ve been dying for someone to take it off my hands.”

“Then it sounds like I’m doing _you_ a favor. I guess you owe me!” Ty Lee winks. Mai can hear the chime of a bell in the cheeky movement.

Something lands coldly in the pit of her stomach.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she says.

Before Ty Lee can reply, a servant bows into the room with dinner. The evening wears on, as evenings never stop doing. She writes back to her uncle with Ty Lee over her shoulder making giggling remarks. Mai can feel a second set of eyes watching through Ty Lee’s, gold behind the gray.

She never does get that final answer.

* * *

“I feel like some of us barely know each other,” Teo says as he gratefully accepts a cup of tea from Zuko.

“What do you mean?” Sokka raises an eyebrow. He gestures broadly to their little gang gathered around the campfire. “We’ve been practically living on top of each other for weeks.”

“No, I agree with Teo,” Haru chimes in. “I don’t know much about what you guys got up to after Katara helped us break out of jail, before the invasion.”

“Neither do I,” Toph quips. “These clowns never tell me anything.”

“We tell you lots of stuff!” Sokka protests.

“What do you want to know?” asks Aang.

Teo rubs his chin thoughtfully.

“Something none of us were there for,” he says. “So it’ll be a new story for as many people as possible.”

“None of you, huh?” Sokka narrows his eyes and strokes his own chin. He hunches forward, hand on his knee, and eyeballs the gathered group. He perks up, pointer finger extended, then slumps. “No, wait, Zuko showed up for that one.”

“I did?” Zuko lifts his head, brow furrowed.

“What about the—” Katara cuts herself off. “No, Zuko was there, too.”

“_Where?”_

“Oh, hey!” Sokka looks at Aang. “How about when you got—”

“Uh,” Aang interrupts, tilting his head toward Zuko.

“Right. Forgot about that.” Sokka nods. “Oh! There was the time we went to—”

“You’ve told everyone that story four times,” Katara laughs.

“And you’ll all hear it again,” Sokka vows earnestly. He snaps his fingers. “I’ve got it! What about that town with the volcano and the _crazy—_”

“No.” Katara’s voice goes hard and serious.

A beat of awkward silence ripples through the group.

“Okay, okay,” Sokka holds his hands up in a jokingly defensive posture that puts everyone back at ease. “Easy, little sister. I’ve got the perfect story. I can _guarantee_ none of you have heard this one before.”

“Why’s that?” asks Toph.

“Because,” says Sokka, “I completely forgot about it until just now.”

“Oh, no,” Aang laughs. He covers his face with his hands. “Tell me you’re not going there, Sokka.”

“Oh, but I am. Toph, Teo, Haru, The Duke, you’re all from the Earth Kingdom.”

“Yep,” The Duke confirms.

Sokka grins like a crescent moon.

“Ever been to the Great Divide?”

If Teo had to guess, he’d say that Sokka’s retelling of their trip across the canyon is probably funnier in retrospect. Or maybe the comedy comes from the way he and his sister can’t seem to stop bickering about what actually happened.

“And then, all because the Gan Jins decided to—”

“I’m sorry, you mean if the _Zhangs_ hadn’t_—_”

“Guys, guys.” Aang stands up, patting the air dismissively. “Here’s how it happened.”

He hauls Sokka to his feet and positions him to one side. Grabbing Zuko by the arm, Aang sets him opposite Sokka. With a burst of air that nearly puts out the campfire, he takes off with a vertical leap to disappear into the shadows of the ceiling.

“Where did he—” Teo starts to ask. Toph snorts.

Three seconds of confused silence later, Aang bursts from the wall of the temple in a tangle of flying limbs. Haru nearly drops his tea. Sokka’s shriek makes The Duke laugh so hard he topples right over onto his back.

Canyon-crawler impressions aside, Teo exchanges a disbelieving look with Haru at the conclusion of their evening’s entertainment.

“Pretty lucky you knew those guys a hundred years ago,” Haru says.

“You could call it luck,” Aang replies with a sheepish grin. “Or you could call it lying.”

“No way,” Toph laughs. “You _duped_ those people into shutting up and getting along?”

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised,” Katara scoffs. Toph stops laughing.

“What do you mean?”

The Duke adjusts his helmet. Teo recognizes his posture—the kid is about ready to bolt. He doesn’t like confrontation. Teo’s no fond fan of it either, and he can feel the weird tension they’ve all been trying to ignore pull taut.

Katara shugs. She looks Aang dead in the eye.

“I’m just saying, we all know what a liar he is.”

Aang’s eyes drop to the ground. Before anyone can say a word—Teo feels like he’s intruding on something unforgivably private—Katara climbs to her feet. Soon, the heavy shadows that fill the temple swallow her up.

When footsteps approach, Katara expects to turn and see Sokka. If not him, her next guess would be Haru, brave and inclined to peacekeeping where he can. Toph, leaping at the chance to call her a hypocrite, wouldn’t be a shock. Even Aang’s pleading eyes would be an almost welcome sight—he could be coming to deliver that long-overdue apology, for starters.

Instead, it’s Zuko.

Katara doesn’t know how to react to the scowl on his face, so she meets it with one of her own and turns her back. She should have known it was him. The moon is closer to full than it’s been since she learned to bloodbend. She could have traced the perforated lines of water across the grass between them. She could have effortlessly found the beat of his heart.

Other than her dad, Zuko is the only person she’s healed since Hama opened this door and shoved her through it. Instinct and the cold calm of crisis were all she had with her father’s wounds under her hands at the invasion, but with Zuko, she had the time and space to think. She had time to make the connection between realigning a person’s energy and taking hold of it, pulling it where she wants—the realization that a scalpel is also a knife.

Katara knows the shape of Zuko’s body turned inside-out. The knowledge makes her sick.

Anger fills her mind with nothing but blood. She came up here, on the cliff above the temple, to stand under the moon and forget about her rage for a few minutes. She was ready to listen to the glacial pace of plant life and try to meet it with her heartbeat. Instead, Zuko’s bloody form sloshes deafeningly right behind her.

If she were a step closer to the ocean of fury that lives in her core where only moonlight can reach, she would spit at him to _Stop that._

_Stop what?_ she imagines him asking.

_Letting your heart beat so loud. Walking around like a waterfall of blood._

_You mean living?_

Before she can think up an answer to the Zuko in her mind, his real voice comes across the span of wind and space between them.

“I don’t understand why you’re taking this out on Aang,” he says. “I’m the one you should be angry at.”

Katara nearly laughs at the irony.

“Oh, I’m plenty angry at you too, don’t worry,” she says over her shoulder. Her eyes fall into the dark valley below. Sokka says it must be a river at other times of the year—she wonders if she would be able to feel it from so high up, so far away.

“Then why are you only being cruel to him?”

A chill sinks down Katara’s spine. _Cruel._ Zuko knows from cruelty. To be called that by a boy whose own father threw him in prison makes her eyes sting. She whirls around to face him.

“You didn’t _lie_ to all of us,” she says, hating the creak in her voice.

“Katara.” Zuko takes a step closer. He meets her glare and stops as if an invisible door has slammed in his face. He squeezes his eyes shut, the space between his nose and forehead wrinkled like he’s getting a headache, and exhales. “If Aang had told you the truth, after the invasion, what would you have done?”

“What?” It’s Katara’s turn to freeze.

“When I came back.” Zuko looks at her with a wry tilt to his mouth. His eyes dart pointedly past Katara. “Would you have thrown me into that gorge?”

“No!” Her voice echoes back from the canyon of her own mouth and into her mind: an endpoint to the conversation with herself Zuko had interrupted. _No._ “I… I would have known you had your reasons.”

“Would you?” Zuko lifts his eyebrow.

Katara presses her lips together. She turns, folds her legs under herself, and sits on the cool evening grass, staring out at the endless summer sky. Her shift in elevation hides the mouth of the canyon behind the clifftop; from this point of view, she could walk to the other side and onward to the edge of the world.

The grass beside her bows under the weight. Zuko kneels, the way he did beside the hot spring on the day he found them—found them again, the first time.

“Even if that’s true,” he says, perfectly civil in the face of being hypothetically waterbent off a cliff by someone he’d considered a friend a week before, “they still wouldn’t have been the reasons you thought.”

“Zuko…” Katara sighs. She doesn’t look at him, and he doesn’t look at her. “You don’t have to.”

The worst part is the way he keeps trying to _fix_ this. He makes it hard to remember that some things are unforgivable.

“I can sit here and tell you that I thought I could get my father to see things my way, but really, I was still trying to please him.” Zuko is a red and black blur in her periphery, moving with dream-like slowness to the cadence of his words. “My father,” he adds with a bitter laugh.

_My father._

Katara thinks about a ship, and a storm, and crying into dad’s chest like she hadn’t been able to since she was twelve years old. Grief turned to anger like water into ice, finally letting it thaw.

Her throat feels tight. She says nothing—she doesn’t have to. Zuko takes her silence as an empty shelf to give his own failures pride of place.

“I was chasing the approval of a man who would kill all of us without a second thought. And I did it by betraying the only people who have ever seen me and accepted for who I am, besides my uncle and my—” He stammers, stops, restarts on shaky ground. “Look, it doesn’t matter why I—”

“Were you going to say your mother?” Katara interrupts.

She finally turns to look at Zuko. His left eye, trapped in its permanent squint, aims beyond the valley, beyond the horizon, burning a hole in the starry sky.

“Yeah,” he says at last.

“Tell me about her.”

Zuko blinks. He turns his head to stare with the same naked bafflement she saw every time she was kind to him back in the early days of their friendship. Or—it wasn’t friendship then, yet. She doesn’t know if or when it will be again.

For the first time in days, Katara feels ready to find out.

“Why?” Zuko’s voice breaks halfway through the word like it’s been shocked out of him.

“Because I want to know.” Katara takes a deep breath, remembers the unforgivable, and makes an offer. “I’ll tell you about my mother, too.”

Zuko stares down at his hands.

“She was… gentle. She always made time for me. I—” he laughs, a dry, quick huff of breath, “I was probably an annoying kid. I didn’t really have… friends? But she let me follow her around like a turtleduckling. Those are the happiest times I can remember.”

Katara can see the movement of Zuko’s throat as he swallows. If the bits and pieces she’s gleaned from him weren’t already enough, the past tense alone would have told her everything she needs to know.

“What happened?” she asks. His hands curl into fists.

_I’m sorry. That’s something we have in common._

“What else?” It’s one of his jokes that isn’t a joke, always with the same punchline. What could the answer ever be, if not _My father_?

Katara nods. That’s enough, for now. She knows how opening a wound like this hurts in a way no healer can wash away.

“My mom kept us all together,” she says. “Literally. I don’t think I ever saw our dad leave the house when I was a kid without mom stopping him to make sure he remembered his gloves, or his hood. His boots, one time,” she recalls with a watery laugh.

Her laughter ends. The sky goes on, darker ahead than behind. Katara and the temple face east. If she waits long enough, right here, the sun will outshine the stars.

“She was like that with everything,” Katara continues quietly. “Always making sure everyone had what they needed and could do what they needed to do. She was—” her voice breaks, “good at keeping people safe.”

“I can see where Sokka gets it,” Zuko says.

The joke—if it is a joke, a symptom of Zuko’s terminal inability to read a room—strums a note of annoyance in Katara’s chest. _Sokka_ is the one who takes after their mother? _Sokka,_ who can’t even remember her face?

Of all the ways she’s been mean and petty and unfair, Katara knows judging her brother for that would be the worst of them all. She takes a deep breath.

“Speaking of Sokka,” Katara diverts her judgement like the course of a river, “have you apologized to _him_ yet?”

Zuko’s spine straightens, his whole body going as still as a deerabbit scenting a predator on the wind. Katara doesn’t have to specify. They both know exactly what she’s talking about.

“I—” he stammers. “It hasn’t come up.”

“Really.” The word falls hard and flat on the ground between them.

“He tried to talk to me about the invasion, before—Right after I came back.” Zuko shifts uncomfortably. His pale fingers pick at the blades of grass tickling over his knees.

“And what? You didn’t let him?” Katara shakes her head. “Do you have any idea what the invasion meant to Sokka? It was _his_ plan. Not dad’s, not the Earth King’s, not even ours. Do you know what it could have meant for peace?”

She can feel her voice rising. She can taste salt foam in her throat.

“The Fire Nation has done nothing but take and take.” She can be proud, at least, of how strong her voice comes out. “We lost our parents. The Earth Kingdom lost its freedom. _You_ lost us the invasion.”

“Katara, I—”

“I know you’re sorry,” she says. “I really do. And I understand we need you around to teach Aang firebending. But beyond that—I don’t know how many second chances the world has left to give you.”

Zuko breathes deeply. She can feel the expansion and contraction in the fluid outlining his lungs. He shuffles around until he faces her, still on his knees. Katara looks at him sharply, startled and wary. His eyes gleam like tiger’s eye stones.

“I won’t need another one,” he vows. “I meant what I said. I’ll do whatever you tell me to make it up to you.”

The tide of her anger comes roaring back into shore. Wasn’t he listening? This isn’t about _her,_ this isn’t something he can fix by earning her forgiveness. The problems he’s made worse are bigger than that—which is the reason, Katara realizes abruptly, why she hasn’t been cruel to him. It isn’t personal, so there isn’t any point.

But cruelty is a language Zuko speaks. If it’s what is needed to make him understand, then Katara can meet him where he is.

“Hm,” she hums sarcastically. Her mouth tastes like sweet venom. “Let me think. You said your uncle is on his way to reconquer Ba Sing Se, right? Then I guess _you_ can bring my mother back.”

She pushes herself to her feet and takes off toward the path back to the temple. This time, finally, Zuko doesn’t follow.

The worst part is that Zuko can’t even delude himself.

He had it all back: his destiny, his bending—his friends. They _literally_ welcomed him with open arms. And how did he respond? By throwing Aang’s delicate balance of peace in his face because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut for three more weeks.

No, that’s not fair. Zuko doesn’t regret telling the truth—he had no choice. He couldn’t have lived with himself otherwise. But the consequences are their own kind of torture.

When Zuko isn’t training Aang or pretending he can fix the world if he just makes everyone enough apologetic tea, he’s usually in his room. Despite the self-imposed exile—and how’s _that_ for a change—he can’t help but notice that he’s not the only one who has been using the temple’s bedroom cells the last few days.

The worst part is that it’s not all about him.

Once he started traveling with them properly—the Avatar being alive and all—Zuko was surprised to discover the group preferred to sleep in a circle around the campfire, weather permitting, practically in a pile. He’s never seen them split further than the walls of a tent.

On his one night at the Western Air Temple before sabotaging his own life, Zuko slept in a spare bedroll two feet equidistant between Sokka and Haru—tried to sleep, anyway. Now, they’ve scattered to the far corners of the temple. Even while making himself scarce, he’s still shattering them apart.

Zuko shakes the thought away and turns his focus to the specific room with the specific person he needs to talk to. One-track mind, that’s him.

“Um,” Zuko clears his throat in the open entryway. He can’t decide if this would be more or less awkward if the Air Nomads had believed in the concept of privacy.

Sokka lies on his back on the room’s single cot, on top of the fur-lined sleeping bag that fills Zuko with unfathomable envy on cold nights when he has to wake up every two hours to breathe fire. He’s holding something over his face, fiddling with it in his clever hands—and then drops it right on his own nose when he hears Zuko. It clatters to the ground.

“Hey!” Sokka rubs his face. He reaches to the floor to grab whatever he dropped and sits up, face pinched around his battered nose.

“Oh—Sorry,” Zuko stammers. “Are you busy?”

“Nah,” Sokka waves him off. He shakes his head as if resetting it, blinking a few times. “Just an idea for Teo. Uh, come on in?”

Zuko nods and shuffles forward three feet.

“So.” Zuko really didn’t think this one through. “How are you?”

“I’m fine?” Sokka says it like a question.

“Good. That’s good.” Zuko nods again. “I haven’t seen you much.”

He briefly wonders just how long it would take to fall off the edge of the temple if he started running now.

Sokka snorts.

“That’s because I’ve been hanging out with Toph, since Haru and I are apparently the only people in the world she’s on speaking terms with.” He shrugs, tossing the wooden doohickey in the air and catching it with his opposite hand. “Plus, Teo and The Duke and I have our secret non-benders’ club the rest of you don’t know about.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” Sokka sets his project on the nearby table. He settles back against the wall, legs and arms crossed. “What are you doing in my room?”

Zuko swallows. Katara’s voice echoes dimly in his mind—_have you apologized to him yet?_—but her parting words are a crack of thunder that drowns it out. Sokka seems determined not to talk about the invasion, and Zuko is determined to meet his new impossible task with a clearer head than the last one. He can deal with this part later.

Sokka eyes him skeptically as Zuko approaches the cot and sits on the opposite end, seiza.

“I know this may seem out of nowhere,” he says, “but I want you to tell me what happened to your mother.”

* * *

So.

Katara tried to steal Appa, succeeded in stealing Zuko, managed to be even meaner to Sokka than she’s been to Aang for the last few days, and is on her way to almost certainly commit a murder.

Aang sighs. He can’t figure out how _exactly_ this is his fault, but somehow he’s sure it is.

“So,” Sokka breaks the silence as Appa vanishes into the night, “can I borrow Momo for a week?”

* * *

“This is it, Katara. Are you ready to face him?”

Oh, is she ready. The door folds inward like ricepaper under the power of her bending. The moon is waxing gibbous like a bare-toothed smile in the sky. She sees the man—the _monster._ Zuko stops his flames. In a moment, Katara will stop his heart.

She can feel it beating. Too strong, too sure, too steady. She wants to feel him panic. If the moon were a little wider, she could do it with a twitch of her fingers. Ending his life would be nothing to her, just like her mother’s was to him.

Katara exhales. Ice creeps up his legs quicker than frost over the ocean in the sunless midwinter. It’s at his hips before he can do more than lunge forward in another attempt at firebending, which Zuko bats away. It reaches his neck. It stops his arm at the far extent of his reach. The shell of ice around his body holds the man as surely as bloodbending would.

That doesn’t stop her from wishing she could fist a hand around his heart.

His face, she leaves unfrozen. She wants him to look her in the eyes. She wants him to know exactly who is forcing him to reap what he’s sown.

There is the heartbeat she’s looking for, pumping blood frantically as the tips of his fingers turn blue. His eyes stare up at her in terror—

The man falls to the floor in a rush of meltwater. He heaves in the breaths he couldn’t take with ice tight around his chest.

“It’s not him,” Katara says in empty disbelief. “He’s not the man.”

Zuko presses an arm behind the man’s back and a name out of the man’s mouth. _Yon Rha._ Katara holds it tightly in her mind like she intends to turn coal to diamond.

In the air again, Katara feels her own heartbeat. She remembers the feeling of his. Given the chance, she would have taken it in her hands and torn.

Katara doesn’t mention it to Zuko. If he knew she’d wanted to use what Hama taught her, the _way_ Hama taught her, he might try to take them back to the Western Air Temple. She can’t risk that. She can’t think about what he would think, what Sokka would think, what _Aang—_

The smooth stone of her mother’s necklace is cool to the touch. Katara takes hold of Appa’s reins and snaps.

* * *

“Listen carefully, Momo,” Sokka says slowly. “I need you to take this and put it on the wooden dowel next to the one that looks just like it. Can you do that?”

Momo blinks his big green eyes. Sokka raises his eyebrows. Momo cocks his head and chirps.

“I don’t think he’s getting it yet,” Teo remarks.

“Shh.” Sokka lays a finger to his lips. “He’s _almost_ there.” He turns to the lemur and holds the gear out between his thumb and forefinger. Momo sniffs it, paces in a circle, and lays down on his own crossed paws.

Sokka slumps forward with a groan. His whole body folds in half until his forehead hits the floor.

“Can you talk me through what you’re doing again?” Teo leans over on one elbow. He peers into the half-assembled underside of his chair, which lies on its side with one wheel removed.

“Well, you remember how you almost broke your neck riding that ramp into the Hall of Statues.” Sokka sprawls out on his stomach. He props his head up on one hand, elbow against the floor.

“I recall,” Teo agrees.

“Your brakes keep failing because the way they work is to apply friction to one wheel, slowing the chair down.” He flattens his free hand and traces an angled path through the air. “Problem is, you were stopping suddenly so often that you wore away the part of the wheel that the lever presses against. No more friction, no more slowing down, and _boom._” He spreads his fingers. “Teo goes splat.”

“I didn’t go _splat,_” he laughs. “I stopped way before I hit Avatar Kuruk.”

“But you could have!”

“I haven’t crashed my chair since I was nine, and I was _gliding,_” Teo argues, but from the smile on his face Sokka can tell he’s just being a brat.

“Either way,” Sokka says with an eye-roll, “you want to be able to make those hairpin turns to satisfy your deranged craving for adrenaline, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then you need brakes that don’t fall apart every week like clockwork. Which is how I thought of this!” Sokka holds up his pointer finger, atop which sits the wooden gear Momo so callously refused to help attach. It does a lazy half-turn. “Clockwork!”

“Right!” Teo nods. He smiles toward Momo. “Clockwork and lemur power.”

“My hand is too big to fit the last gear in, alright?” Sokka does _not_ whine. He’s a warrior and a strategist and at least a tenth of the way towards being a master swordsman, which leaves no room for whining. “It’s all the way at the back.”

“Why didn’t you put that one in first?” Teo grins.

Sokka glares at him for seven consecutive seconds. Teo finally breaks, laughing until his sides hurt.

“It’s _your_ chair,” Sokka points out snootily.

“They’re _your_ giant hands,” Teo replies.

“My hands are a perfectly normal size! I just need Momo’s tiny opposable thumbs.”

“I could do it,” says a disembodied voice from the sky. Sokka startles so badly the arm propping his head up slips and his chin smashes into the ground. He scrambles to his feet, cursing his idiocy for leaving his boomerang halfway across the temple.

Sokka freezes when he finds the source of the commotion. Twenty feet in the air, sitting on a ledge populated by nothing but birds’ nests, The Duke waves merrily down at him.

“Hi, The Duke,” says Teo.

“How did you even get up there?” Sokka screeches.

The Duke doesn’t answer. Instead, he scoots right off the ledge, catches the side of a column, slides down it for several feet, lands in a pile of ungraceful eight-year-old limbs on top of the head of a statue, slides backwards on his stomach with his legs dangling behind him until all that keeps him attached to his perch are his tiny hands, and finally drops to the floor—sending Sokka into a continuous series of near-conniptions in the process.

“Nice one!” Teo laughs.

“Haru deserves a raise,” Sokka mutters weakly, clutching his shirt over his pounding heart.

“Haru is getting paid?” The Duke asks. He sounds scandalized on his own behalf.

“It’s a figure of speech.” Sokka shakes himself. He sees weirder stuff than that every day. Aang, for example, is only four years older than The Duke if you don’t count the century he spent on ice, and he can _fly._

Aang is only four years older than The Duke. Sokka puts that thought away for later. Way later.

The Duke shrugs. He walks up to Sokka and holds out a wordless hand. Sokka deposits the gear in his palm.

“It goes on that dowel, way in the back.” He crouches over The Duke’s shoulder as the kid gets down on his knees and reaches into the chair’s wooden machinery.

“Yep, I heard you telling Momo,” The Duke replies. Sokka flushes, embarrassed. “I think I got it.”

Sokka leans in to inspect his work. He smiles.

“We’ll make a mechanist of you yet.” He pats The Duke’s helmet, which falls down over his eyes. Behind him, Teo snickers.

“Guys!” Sokka turns to see Aang silhouetted in the archway. The evening light behind him darkens his usual yellows and oranges to a set of flaming red. “They’re back.”

Sokka chases Aang into the courtyard of the temple just as Appa touches down. Zuko hops from the saddle—Katara is nowhere in sight.

“She had me drop her off up top.” Zuko points to the ceiling, the grassy cliff above. “I think she needed a minute.”

“What happened?” Aang asks quietly.

Zuko, with deliberate care and no judgement in his voice, tells him.

He follows them topside, but hangs back while Aang and Zuko approach Katara. They’re the ones with stuff to work out, Sokka thinks, who haven’t had a lifetime of hurting and forgiving each other.

Regardless of how easily _Then you didn’t love her the way I did_ settled in with the dozen other things that poke and prod at Sokka’s mind like boarcupine quills every second of the day, he doesn’t want to upset the delicate balance of his sister actually, finally talking to Aang.

Their conversation is a short one, but still. It’s progress.

Katara looks past Zuko to her brother. Her eyes are wet and her face is determined. Sokka knows that look—and he knows what’s behind it. His prickling troubles lay themselves flat and smooth.

Take a long look, because this is the last of Sokka’s thoughts we will be privy to today.

We take a step back as Katara takes a step forward, then another, then another, until the wide and windswept clifftop fills our view, two blue-clad figures at the center of it.

Some things are not necessary to witness.

We are guests in their story, after all. We take off our shoes out of respect; we sit with them as friends. But we do not overstay our welcome.

The figures, small against the grassy expanse and smaller still in comparison to the distant trees, come together. Their hug lasts an age, or perhaps we have immortalized it the way the great swordsmen do, holding the lay of the land as a painting in our minds. The sun melts into the horizon.

It all goes dark for us. We will see them again tomorrow.

* * *

_Need meat. Gone fishing. Back in a few days._

_Sokka and Zuko_

_One more thing. Aang, practice your firebending while I’m gone. Do twenty sets of fire fists and ten hot squats every time you hear a badgerfrog croak._

_Zuko_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't THINK I'd just skip The Boiling Rock did you? Cinematic Masterpiece The Boiling Rock (2008)? As if. It just needed its own chapter.


	8. From the Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all your patience waiting for this update! This chapter was tough, and I didn't mean for a part of the story about violence and prison systems to be so topical, but it's never really _not_ topical, is it?
> 
> I hope the best for you and yours. I hope you are all staying safe where you can, staying well how you may, and raising hell when you must.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: incarceration, violence against prisoners, canon-typical violence in general, discussions of murder, and teenagers in love. Discussion of current events in the end notes.

They’re in the air for less than an hour before Zuko breaks.

“Can you explain something to me?” He doesn’t look at Sokka, instead punctuating the question with another burst of fire that flares up into the belly of the balloon.

“Uh, sure,” Sokka agrees. “What’s on your mind?”

“Just—” Zuko exhales. “The way I’ve been… treated.”

Sokka winces. “Listen, Toph will come around—”

“I’m not talking about Toph.” Zuko whips around to look at Sokka, bafflement written across his face. “The rest of you.”

Sokka runs fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck. “Hey, man, you’re right. I’m sorry I’ve been distant. I didn’t think about how lonely you must have been.”

Zuko narrows his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

They stare at each other, mutually confused by the invisible wall of miscommunication. It takes Sokka a dozen silent moments before it clicks.

“You think we’re being _too nice_ to you?” he shouts.

Zuko nods emphatically. Sokka nearly starts banging his head against the iron burner.

“I don’t get it.” Zuko fists a hand in his hair. “Sure, Aang and Katara were angry, and Toph is—But you all just… trust me again. What _is_ that?”

“What’s there to get?” Sokka crosses his arms.

Zuko’s eyes practically pop out of his skull. “Everything!”

Sokka sighs. He sizes Zuko up—tense and desperate and worried. The way his eyes flash like sparks off the clash of metal and stone would have had Sokka drawing his boomerang a few months ago. But he’s long since watched the guy cradle an injured bird, throw a firebending tantrum, fight for his life, play pai sho, and humble himself in apology before people he had every reason to expect violence from, among a hundred other things.

He’s seen a lot from Zuko. He knows him by now.

“We care about you,” Sokka says simply. “That means something.”

“What? What does it mean?” This only seems to rile him up further. Sokka briefly entertains himself with the image of Zuko’s hair standing on end like a boarcupine. “I’ve _met_ Aang. He cares about everyone in the world, and the rest of you aren’t far off. That doesn’t make me special.”

“Fine, caring about you isn’t enough.” Sokka throws his hands in the air. “You’re not wrong. Katara and Aang would cut off their own legs for anybody with a sob story, and Toph loves helping people, and I’m not exactly in it for the stellar benefits package.”

“So what is it? Why do you trust me more than I do?” Zuko’s eyes widen. His mouth hangs open like a wasprat trap—he obviously didn’t mean to say that last part.

He doesn’t take it back, though.

Sokka can’t manage to fight off a smirk. “That’s why,” he says.

“That I—” Zuko furrows his brow, “don’t trust myself?”

Sokka rolls his eyes. “That you can’t stop yourself from telling everyone exactly how you feel all the time.”

Zuko wilts a little. “Sorry.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Sokka hastens to assure him. “I mean, I can see how it would get really inconvenient if you have to actually keep your mouth shut, and to be honest I could do without your tea-making commentary—Do you realize you talk to yourself when you’re making tea? Never mind, it doesn’t matter—”

Sokka takes a deep breath, grateful that Zuko seems too flabbergasted to interrupt. “I can’t speak for everybody,” he finishes, “but I trust you because I know you too well not to.”

Zuko turns back to the balloon’s burner. He circles his wrist and shoots another bout of flame into it.

“You shouldn’t,” he says darkly.

“Are you about to pull the cryptic act again? Because you can save it.” Sokka waves a hand dismissively at him and lets his head thunk back against the side of the balloon. He had an early morning. He deserves a nap.

“I’m not,” Zuko says, voice soft as the crackling of flames in front of him. “I’m talking about what I did at the invasion.”

Sokka lifts his head. Zuko keeps his eyes on the flames.

“Katara told me what the invasion plan meant to you,” he says slowly. “And I ruined it.”

“Why are you doing this?” Sokka asks, suddenly suspicious. “Do you not want me to trust you?” Is he planning some second round of even worse betrayal? Did his father _send_ him here? That wouldn’t make sense, Sokka’s brain supplies, considering Zuko is a bad liar on a good day and Toph would have said something. Plus, who dislocates their own shoulder for a con?

“No!” Finally, Zuko looks at him. “I do. That’s why I’m here. But I don’t deserve your trust—yours, specifically.”

Sokka hangs his head with a sigh. He hasn’t had to actually put this into words before. Everyone else just _knew,_ or if they didn’t, they knew enough not to ask. Although the shape of it has settled into a permanent structure in Sokka’s brain, it takes him a while to figure out where to start.

“It’s not your fault,” he begins, a thesis to what’s to come.

“Yeah, it kind of is,” Zuko snarks back. “Nobody forced me to betray you.”

“The invasion, I mean,” Sokka says. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ve gone over that day in my head a hundred times. And you know what I realized?”

Zuko crosses his arms. “What?”

“The moment I decided to stick around after we found out they knew we were coming, we’d already lost.”

“I stopped Aang from taking out my father,” Zuko blurts. “He had—I don’t know how long it was, maybe a minute. He could have—”

“Stop.” He holds his hands parallel and points them at Zuko. “Think this through. Even if Aang had killed your dad in a minute flat, what would have happened? There were airships ready to take out the submarines. We weren’t getting off that island. Everyone else would have had their firebending back. And then who would be in charge? _Azula?_”

“But—” Zuko casts around for any other excuse to pile shame on himself.

Sokka shakes his head. “It was a long shot from the get-go and everyone knew it.” He stares out over the endless fluffy clouds, somber thoughts at odds with the scenery. “The fact is, the only choice that cost us the day was mine.”

Zuko goes quiet for a long time. Sokka glances at him from the corner of his eye and sees his gaze directed up, beyond the edge of the balloon’s red fabric, out into the blue of the sky that belongs to no one nation.

“At least,” he says at last, aiming for levity and missing by a mile, “you don’t have to feel guilty for leaving me behind.”

“Yep,” Sokka agrees with a dark, sardonic humor. “That’s one knocked off my body count.”

Zuko looks at him sharply. “We’ll find your dad, Sokka.”

“Are you sure?” He cringes at his own question. His voice comes young and a touch desperate. He’s been through too much to ever let himself sound that young again.

“The Fire Nation doesn’t execute its prisoners of war,” he explains, then hesitates. “Usually.”

_“Usually?”_ Sokka leans forward so fast he nearly rocks the basket of the balloon. “What does that mean?”

“Traditionally, we don’t. Combat is considered an honorable way to kill, but striking someone down when they can’t fight back…” Zuko goes far away behind the eyes for a second. He shakes himself. “It’s _supposed_ to be disgraceful. But from what I’ve seen of the way my father has handled the military since he took the throne, it does happen.”

“Like our mom,” Sokka murmurs. Every bone in his body goes cold.

“Yeah,” Zuko agrees. He straightens his drooping shoulders suddenly, like he’s had a thought. “She was never taken as a prisoner, though.”

“So?” Sokka greets the glimmer of optimism in Zuko’s eye with a cynical brow-raise.

“When I was—After the invasion, my father mentioned unruly war prisoners. He only brought it up to test me, but it means the troops are alive. I would have heard about a mass execution,” Zuko mutters, just loudly enough for Sokka to hear, “no matter how much he was keeping me in the dark.”

He throws an angst-ridden handful of fire into the burner.

Sokka smiles. “See? This is what I was talking about.”

“What?” Zuko turns back to him. The confusion written on his face is less shame and more the normal social awkwardness he’s come to associate with their resident flamethrower.

“Nothing,” Sokka waves him off. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Oh.” Zuko turns away. It could be the heat of the open fire right in front of him, and he’ll let the guy keep his dignity enough not to ask, but Sokka suspects the pink tinge to his pale cheek is an honest-to-goodness blush.

* * *

“I just don’t get it.” Aang drops his chin heavily into his hands. “We talked the other day, and I thought we were getting somewhere. But now we’re not. What does she want, anyway? How can I fix it?”

“I don’t know, Aang.” Teo shakes his head sympathetically.

“I should have seen this coming,” he says sadly. “She _hates_ being lied to.”

“Yeah, I think it’s a good idea to consider it from her—”

“But Katara always does this! She’ll hold a grudge forever if you let her,” Aang huffs.

“Mhm,” Teo hums.

“I barely even lied. And it was for a reason!”

“Right. And it’s—”

“This is nowhere near the worst thing I’ve done since we met. I can’t understand why it’s such a big deal, and she won’t talk to me about it. It’s so frustrating.”

“You’re totally allowed to feel that way—”

“Ugh!” Aang topples backward, hands over his face, and groans his incoherent feelings into the sky.

Teo reaches down to pat his head.

* * *

“Hey there, fellow guard. How goes it?”

“Zuko?” Sokka lifts the visor of his helmet and basically shouts _Traitor prince, get your traitor prince here!_

“Shh!” Zuko scowls. “Listen, I asked around the lounge.”

“And?” His eyes grow wide, bluer than the sky behind him and full of more fear than Zuko has ever seen all the times Sokka has had reason to fear for his life.

Zuko lifts his own visor so Sokka can see his eyes when he smiles. “Your dad’s here.”

“Are you sure?” Sokka’s wonderstruck grin eats up his whole face.

“Yeah.” Something in Zuko blooms like a fire lily, rare and warm and alive. “He came in three days ago. He’s the only Water Tribe prisoner, but it’s him.”

Sokka collapses against the wall in relief like a dropped marianette.

“Great,” he sighs. With his eyes closed, less tension in his face than Zuko has seen since the invasion, he looks so peaceful it makes Zuko’s heart hurt. “Okay. Where’s his cell?”

“I have the number, but he won’t be there.”

Sokka straightens. His brows come down, heavy over eyes that shutter themselves against their recent bout of optimism. “What? Why not?”

Zuko gestures to the open yard below. Prisoners mill about in their hour of sunlight.

“Everyone is outside?” he says.

“Oh.” Sokka chuckles and rubs the back of his neck. He comes to stand at the railing next to Zuko, staring out over the gray stone surfaces of the prison, dismal even in the searing sunlight. “I can’t believe it. It’s almost too good to be true. Somewhere down there, waiting for the right opportunity to escape, is—Suki!”

“Huh?” Zuko turns to look questioningly at Sokka, but what he gets is a Sokka-shaped dust cloud. A bell rings and an announcement instructs the prisoners back to their cells. Zuko’s fellow guard takes the stairs three at a time.

Zuko groans and rushes to catch up.

* * *

“It’s ridiculous!” Katara shouts. “Did he think that just because I said two words to him without biting his head off, everything is fine?”

“I don’t know,” Haru hums. “Maybe he—”

“This is _just_ like Aang,” she huffs. “He never wants to deal with consequences.”

“Well, these might not be—”

“We’re trying to save the world, here!” Katara waves her arms emphatically. “If there’s ever a time to swallow his pride and apologize, this would be it.”

“Definitely. But don’t you think—”

“It’s not going to be easy, but that’s what growing up is. You know?”

Haru blinks. His little mustache twists as he purses his lips.

“Do I?”

Katara crosses her arms and hunches down unhappily.

“I mean,” Haru says, “yes. Sure. You’re right.”

She perks up.

“And another thing—”

* * *

The door creaks open. Zuko blinks against the light—the familiarity of it strikes him and his shoulder aches in remembered pain.

“Well, well, well,” says a deep, crackling voice. “Another escape attempt so soon? I thought I’d made an example of Chit Sang.” He _tsk_s, stepping into the light. “But criminals don’t get yourselves locked up here through sheer brainpower, now do you?”

Zuko keeps his mouth shut. The man isn’t wearing the normal uniform of the other guards, and his hair is free rather than tied up inside a helmet. That, plus the deference the guards at the door show him, tell Zuko_ noble family, high rank._ Zuko’s own track record, his inability to catch a break in general and in prison specifically, tell him _warden._

The warden scowls.

“I know every prisoner on this island. I would have remembered a face like that.” He stands with his hands clasped behind his back. If Zuko weren’t leaning against the wall, he knows the warden would be circling him like a buzzard wasp. “How did you get here?”

Zuko says nothing, but his jaw clenches without his permission, hard enough to ache.

“Oh, the silent type, hm? We’ll fix that in time.” The warden turns sharply. Silhouetted in the door, he leans toward one of the guards as if to pass on a secret. His voice carries—Zuko hears him perfectly, which was the point. “Let me know when he’s ready to talk.”

The guard nods. The door slams shut behind the warden.

People keep asking Sokka to _do things._ Sure, he’s disguised as their coworker and very clearly on the clock—he wonders briefly if he could keep up the charade long enough to collect a paycheck—but it’s really annoying, considering the whole secret jailbreak mission thing he’s got going on. And now he doesn’t have a lookout to give him five minutes to talk to Suki.

They’ve managed brief snatches of conversation as Sokka finds excuses to stroll past her cell, but it’s been hours. She doesn’t know where his dad is, nor where Zuko might have been taken.

Her face did something weird when he said Zuko’s name. Sokka is still kicking himself for forgetting that the guy burnt down her village and that’s not a bygone any normal person lets stay that way.

He ends up on dinner delivery duty. For all his bluffing, Sokka has a clear _new guy_ energy about him. He’ll take it; it’s better than _imposter_ energy. Bending down, shoving food trays in through a slot at the base of cell doors, moving onto the next, and half-sprinting back to the kitchen every few minutes because he can’t balance more than a few trays at a time. Rinse, repeat.

It gives him time to think, and that’s all that can be said about it.

_I’ll figure it out,_ he’d hissed to Zuko as he led him away. Sokka wants to bury his face in the bowl of underdone rice in front of him and never come up again. He _hasn’t_ figured it out. He’s figured out pretty much nothing at all, except for how impulsive it was to go chasing after Suki.

He doesn’t regret it—the tingle in his lips from kissing her again hasn’t faded, for all the trouble they’re in. But he could have at least asked for his dad’s cell number beforehand. Or not gotten Zuko caught.

A third person locked up in this hunk of hot metal, a third weight on his shoulders. Great.

“Shut up,” snaps a throaty voice from the other side of the door. Sokka startles and knocks the dish of rice over. Its little lid goes skittering into the darkness of the cell.

“What?” he huffs indignantly.

“You’re whistling,” the voice comes again. “I hate whistling.”

“I wasn’t whistling!”

“Thought you guards weren’t supposed to make small talk with the dirty low-lifes,” the voice chuckles. “Now stop whistling, or I’ll get myself thrown back in the cooler for what I’m gonna do to you.”

Sokka doesn’t know what that means, but he knows a credible threat when he hears one. He swallows.

“No whistling, got it.” He shoves the tray the last few inches into the cell and scurries away, lips held firmly shut.

Sokka finishes this round of trays and makes it halfway back to grab more. An idea cracks over his head like an egg.

“Hey,” he jogs up to another guard, whose visor, he’s sure, is the only thing stopping her glare from disintegrating him on the spot. He scratches the back of his head, unsuccessfully due to the metal helmet in the way. “I got orders to go to the cooler. But I don’t, uh—”

“Newbie,” she scoffs. “That way, up two flights of stairs, and you’ll be on the lowest level. Did anybody tell you _which_ cooler?” Her voice drips with disdain as if she already knows the answer.

“Um,” Sokka says again.

“Of course.” She presses her knuckles to the forehead of her helmet. “They’re all in the same wing. I don’t have time to hunt down whoever’s orders you’re following, but I’m sure somebody will be waiting for you. Just take a peek down the hall on each floor, and don’t dawdle.”

Sokka nods enthusiastically through her sharp, staccato explanation.

“Thanks so much! I owe you one!” He clicks his tongue with a wink and takes off before she can throttle him.

Down the hall, up two flights—and a big, metal door labeled COOLERS. Convenient.

The first level is nearly indistinguishable from the rows of cells he’s been tossing food into for a mind-numbingly long stretch of the evening. Dim, red light illuminates a stretch of closed doors. He scampers up to the next floor: more of the same. The third level of coolers? Also identical.

Sokka shuts the door from the stairs behind him slowly. The creak of it echoes like an alarm. He holds his breath for a few seconds. When nothing happens, he starts down the hall.

He was wrong about the doors. They’re different from those of the cells: narrower, with no slot at the bottom—no gaps between the door and the metal frame at all—glass in the tiny slit of the window. Sokka peeks in the window, confirms the room is empty, and pulls the handle. The door slides open, revealing—

Another door.

Sokka slides that one open as well and gasps at the sudden wave of cold air washing over him. He’d gotten used to how sweltering the Fire Nation is in summer; the contrast and dry chill have him coughing in surprise.

“Huh,” he says to himself, shutting the door. “Guess that’s why they call it the cooler.”

“Brilliant,” a voice behind him drawls sarcastically. Sokka yelps.

“Uh,” he stammers, spinning around and trying his best to project the distilled essence of innocence. “I was looking for—”

“You’re the new guy,” the guard observes. He crosses his arms across a chest as wide as a sea-prune barrel.

“Yep,” Sokka confirms.

“You saved Qinyi from that imposter earlier today.” He reaches out a massive arm and slaps Sokka on the back. “Good work, newbie.”

“Thanks,” Sokka wheezes.

“You lost?”

“A little.” He shrugs with a smile that he hopes looks chagrined.

“I get it. Took me a week to stop mixing up blocks five and eight. You’d think for all the money they put into security around here, the place would be better designed.” The guard starts toward the stairs, back where Sokka came from. Sokka hurries to catch up.

“Haha, yeah,” he agrees.

“So, what were you doing poking around the coolers by yourself?”

“Oh.” Sokka chews his lip. With all his stress today, he’s close to breaking skin. “I was on dinner duty—I finished! Early. And I thought, hey, I heard so much about these coolers, better make sure… I know… where they are?”

The guard chuckles. “It’s your first day, right?”

“Yeah.” He nods. _Just keep nodding, Sokka—Okay, maybe you can stop nodding now._

“Then I won’t tell anyone you cut out a few minutes early, provided it doesn’t happen again.”

“It won’t.” With any luck, he’ll be out of this place before anyone can even think about dumping another task on him.

“Good. Now come on,” the guard puts a meaty arm around Sokka’s shoulders and pulls him toward the lower level. “You gave the bottomfeeders their dinner. You deserve your own.”

This must be the lounge Zuko found this morning. Guards mill around at tables, helmets off, chatting and laughing over trays of much better-looking food than what Sokka spent the afternoon shoving under doors.

What strikes him most is how _human_ a scene it is. A few months ago, Sokka would have been shocked to see anyone from the Fire Nation laugh as their friend knocks over a cup by gesticulating too wide and spills tea across a table. Now, he’s met civilians and masters and children in this nation, as human as anyone else—though it still makes him dizzy and distantly furious to see them smiling and, like one of those optical illusion paintings that is both two faces and the hilt of a sword, to know what the empty-eyed helmets at their elbows mean. To know that these are the people keeping his friends and his father in prison, in indignity, in shame.

“What’s your name, anyway?” The guard elbows him out of his thoughts. “I’m Lee.”

“I’m—” Sokka doesn’t let himself stumble, “also Lee.”

Lee roars with laughter.

“Yeah, there’s a million of us.”

“Yeah.” Sokka grabs a tray. He’s gotten here ahead of the pack, it seems, because the sticky buns are still steaming. His stomach throws a riot at the sight and smell—Sokka abruptly realizes that he never ate lunch today.

Lee waves him over to a long table, where he sits beside another pair of guards. They seem to be deep in conversation about a play, of all things. Something about poor acting but decent effects. It reminds Sokka of Zuko, which in turn reminds him of dad, which in turn reminds him why he’s here.

“Hey, Lee?” he asks once he’s stuffed a reasonable amount of food down his throat and can hold a human conversation again.

“‘eah?” Lee grunts through a mouthful of pork and bean paste.

“The, uh, guy I turned in earlier. Who attacked another guard.” Sokka pushes a slippery pair of noodles around the tray with his chopsticks, casual as can be. “You don’t happen to know where he went, do you? What happened to him?”

The man grins.

“Why? Afraid he’s going to bust out and seek vengeance?”

“No!” Sokka yelps. He doesn’t want to lose face in front of the guards—it’s risky enough asking about Zuko at all. “I just—want to tell that dirty low-life what I think of him!” He pounds a fist into the opposite palm, a conscious mimicry of Toph, Sokka’s embodied ideal of toughness.

Lee laughs again. He claps Sokka on the shoulder.

“You’ll have to do that later,” he says. “Warden’s beaten you to the punch today. They probably threw the guy back into his cell to marinate.”

“Marinate?” Sokka squints. Lee tilts his head, eyebrows raised.

“You know, since he’s been tenderized?” He holds out an open palm, prompting Sokka to pick up on the joke. “Because… they beat him up.”

“Oh. Ha!” Sokka laughs for the span of a second. The meaning catches up to him, and his laughter dies a brutal death. “Oh.”

“Don’t torture the kid with your jokes, Lee,” scoffs one of the other guards at the table. She points her chopsticks at him warningly. “Enough of that and he’ll be ready to walk into the lake by the end of the week.”

“No, no, it was a good one,” Sokka assures her. It was, actually, a pretty good joke. He just wishes it weren’t about Fire Nation prison guards trying to beat answers out of Zuko.

“Then again,” Lee muses, “if you want to get a few good hits in when nobody’ll notice, now might be an alright time. Work with what the warden started, you know?”

“Sure,” Sokka says weakly. Dad has been here for days. _Suki_ has been here for months. Locked up with these people. “Yeah. Good plan.”

The handle shifts. The hinge creaks. Zuko rolls to his feet, in a defensive stance before the sliver of light on the wall has widened an inch.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he snarls through his split lip.

“You sure about that?” says Sokka. Zuko falls backward onto the thin cot in relief. The door closes.

“This isn’t going well,” Zuko says to the ceiling. A talent for stating the obvious is one of his few reliable qualities. It’s good to hang onto what little stability he can find, in trying times. Maybe Uncle said that once, or maybe he’s finally creating his own aphorisms. That would be nice.

“How are you?” Sokka asks, ignoring his statement completely.

Zuko lifts his head and lets the view of his face do the talking. His lip stopped bleeding sometime in the last hour. He doesn’t want to think about the shiner that must be emerging around his right eye. Soon, his face will probably look like a theatre mask: both eyes slitted, daubed with gaudy colors.

Sokka winces.

“I’m fine,” Zuko says, for want of anything else to say.

“Yeah, right.” He comes closer. His hand comes up gently beneath Zuko’s chin, tilting his head tenderly one way and then the other. “Ouch,” he says sympathetically.

“Where’s your sister when you need her?” Zuko jokes lamely. He wriggles out of Sokka’s grip. Touch is—something, right now. He can’t tell if that _something_ is good or bad, but it’s too much, whatever it is. He sits up on the cot, back against the wall.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Sokka brushes his hands on the front of his pants as if Zuko’s face is contagious.

“My ribs are sore,” he answers honestly, “but I don’t think they’re broken. It doesn’t matter—Did you find your dad?”

“No,” Sokka sighs. Then his eyes go wide and his arms come up and he stammers, “Wait, hang on, it _totally_ matters. You’re hurt. Like, bad. Stay still, or, or something.”

“I’ve had worse,” Zuko says, “and you’re not the sibling with the healing hands, so let’s focus on getting out of here. Hopefully, they don’t get a chance to break my nose before we go.”

“Okay. You’re right.” Sokka gets that intense, focused look on his face, where everything that isn’t _important_ and _now _gets shoved to the side. “Did you tell them anything?”

“No. They got bored before they even gave me the black eye.”

Sokka shakes his head in confusion. “Then how’d you get the black eye?”

“Oh.” It isn’t funny, but he laughs. It’s possible he’s still a _little_ punchy from the multiple blows to the head. “I spit blood at one of them.”

_“Why?”_ Sokka wails. “Why would you do that?”

“Saw it in a play once,” Zuko shrugs. Sokka slaps himself in the forehead.

“Okay, you’re not allowed to get interrogated anymore.” He waves a stern finger in Zuko’s face.

“I’ll try to remember that,” he replies dryly. “Block four, cell nineteen.”

“Huh?”

“That’s your dad.” Zuko nods toward the door. “Now go find him and let’s get out of here.”

Sokka beams. He looks like he’d hug Zuko if he weren’t worried about snapping his fragile bones. Part of Zuko is disappointed that he doesn’t try it anyway.

Right before sunset, they’re let out into the yard once more. Zuko isn’t sure if the timing is traditional or a coincidence.

If the former, it’s practically an insult, a symbolic reminder to any firebender in this place—no matter how keenly you feel the cycle of your chi, no matter what rite or ceremony you could perform at this hour if you had your liberty, you’ll never be allowed to firebend again. No matter how hard you squint through the steam, you won’t see the sunset melt across the horizon through the wall of the crater.

If the latter, it’s a nice evening. The heat of the day has vanished from the air, but the stone of the courtyard is warm. The sky is a washed-out blue, streaked with pink far enough overhead to be seen above the ridge of the crater.

He keeps an eye out for Chief Hakoda. He finds Suki.

Or, to be precise, she finds him.

The guy turns his head and—yep, that’s definitely the same one who burnt down her village.

Suki wouldn’t have assumed as much if Sokka hadn’t said his name. He looks a lot different without the armor and the ponytail. She can’t go around thinking everyone with a burn scar is the banished prince of the Fire Nation, after all. That would be a lot of banishments. A lot of princes.

_This_ prince, she owes a kick in the ribs. But she owes the prince’s sister a lot more than that, and Sokka seems to trust him. She can kill him later if she needs to. Suki isn’t in the habit of striking until she knows which way her opponent will move.

Besides, from the state of his face, she’d say someone is way ahead of her on that front. Suki winces reflexively at the purple swelling above his cheekbone.

“Hey,” she greets. He doesn’t seem startled by her presence, just the fact that she’s talking to him.

“Um, hey, fellow prisoner,” he says. “How goes it?”

“I’m Suki.” She lifts one of her crossed arms and waves.

“Oh! Hello. I’m—” He stammers through a non-introduction. “Sokka’s told me about you.”

“He has, has he? And what did he tell you?” Suki smirks, the pressure of Sokka’s mouth against hers a happily recent memory.

“That you’re, uh.” For a banished prince who lit her aunt’s pottery shop on fire a few months ago, he’s really sweating under the pressure of smalltalk. “Named Suki.”

She laughs. The prince’s face goes plum-beet-red underneath the bruising. It’s really kind of sweet. If she doesn’t end up having to kill him, she thinks she’ll like the guy. She grabs him by the arm and pulls him into an empty corner of the yard.

“Listen,” she says, “I’m happy you’re here. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

He seems to find his footing as the conversation turns to their escape. The prince nods.

“I’m glad to help.”

It doesn’t sound like a lie. Sokka’s a good judge of character—he and Suki have that in common—but it’s nice to have another piece of confirmation, something solid to stand on.

“Why _are_ you here, anyway?” Suki asks, sitting on one of the concrete slabs strewn so kindly around the yard for the prisoners’ convenience. “It seems dangerous, being… who you are, in a place like this.”

Zuko’s face goes through a complicated series of configurations.

“Sokka told you,” he sighs, finally settling on resignation with a wary glance around them.

Suki nods noncommittally. If he figures out who she is, the embarrassment will serve him right and be funny to boot. If he doesn’t, it could be an advantage for her down the road. Not that she’s planning to kill him, she reminds herself.

He sits down next to her.

“I owe Sokka. A lot.” The prince leans his forearms against his thighs. “He thinks it’s his fault his dad is locked up in here, and since I can’t convince him otherwise, it was the least I could do to try and help.”

“Why would he think that?” Suki furrows her brow and regrets the words as soon as they come. Sokka should be the one to tell her—but the prince is already stammering out an answer.

“They kind of invaded the Fire Nation Capital together,” he says. “It was Sokka’s idea, so.”

Suki blinks. She blinks again. She starts laughing.

“He’s really something,” she sighs. The prince glances at her from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah,” he agrees awkwardly.

“You must be really something too,” she adds, “to break into an unbreakable jail to pay back a favor.”

The prince runs a hand through his hair. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“You don’t have to explain,” she assures him. “It’s enough that you’re here and that Sokka trusts you. That’s good enough for me.”

His lips press together into a tight, white line, but he nods. An elephant-rhino’s worth of tension vanishes from his shoulders as he sits up straight.

“And Sokka trusts you. That’s good enough for me, too.”

Suki suddenly feels strangely _seen._ She doesn’t know what to do with that burst of understanding, so she sits with it in silence. The stone around them darkens as the sun sets. Most of the prisoners meander slowly across the yard to follow its fading shafts of light like a sundial, leaving Suki and Zuko more alone than before.

“How long have you been here?” the prince asks, breaking the silence. Suki is surprisingly unrelieved by it, though it’s still welcome.

“Since spring. Do you know your way around yet?”

“A little. Want to give me the tour?”

“Right this way, your highness.” Suki stands and bows sarcastically. She’s surprised when the prince snorts a quiet laugh.

“Don’t call me that,” he mutters, but there’s no heat behind it.

Suki smiles. She really does hope she won’t have to kill him. Only if he hurts Sokka, she decides. Anything less, as long as he doesn’t burn down any more villages, and she can see them becoming friends.

“Their leader Suki is here! She’s going to escape with us. And you remember Zuko?”

Dad’s brows pull together.

_“Prince_ Zuko? You mean the son of the Fire Lord?” He scratches the side of his chin. “I don’t know him, but I know of him.”

“Oh!” Sokka squeaks. “Right. Um, I heard he’s here too.”

“Sounds like a major problem,” dad grunts, crossing his arms with a serious, thoughtful look on his face.

“Yeah.” Sokka’s voice comes out strained. “Well, the good news is we have more backup than just Suki. Remember our new friend? With the—” Sokka reflexively gestures to the left side of his face before cringing.

The clouds over dad’s face part. He grins, delighted.

“Lee! Yes, he told me his name, Sokka. I won’t have to keep calling him the Blue Spirit.”

“Haha.” Sokka is suddenly grateful that his normal laugh already has a habit of sounding like two turtleseals fighting over half a fish. It hides the nervousness. “I forgot how much you knew,” he mutters honestly.

“Hard to believe your old man knows a thing or two, huh?” Dad puts a hand on his shoulder. “So what’s your plan?”

“We don’t have one yet, but—” Sokka tilts his head.

“But?” Dad’s voice is warm and proud. Sokka instinctively sits up straighter.

“I’m working on an idea.”

As soon as the sun is gone, the alarm commands them back to their cells. Prince Zuko parts from the Earth Kingdom girl. Hoshi notes the prince’s gait, tender and a little slow as he trudges up the stairs. Presumably his face isn’t the only thing the guards messed up something good.

Pearls of wisdom tumble through Hoshi’s mind: third time’s the charm; what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; if you want something done right—get somebody else to do the dirty work. He has plenty of blood on his hands already, but that doesn’t make the cleanup pleasant. This will be so much more efficient.

The prince’s irises flash gold from mismatched sides of his face. He catches Hoshi’s eyes. His expression is priceless for the half-second before the door slams shut and locks him in for the night.

In the privacy of his own cell, the pirate’s python-koi lips curl into a cruel smile.

* * *

“Bets on how long the two of them hold out?” Toph asks. She tosses a lychee nut into the air and catches it in her mouth.

“They’ll be friends again by tomorrow,” The Duke says. Toph laughs, wiping her fingers on her tunic.

“I’ll take those odds.”

* * *

“I’m telling you, it’ll work. My dad and I tested it last night.”

“But how are you going to get the cooler out?” asks Suki.

“Yeah,” a deep voice chimes in. “How _are_ you going to get the cooler out?”

Suki, Zuko, and Sokka’s startled eyes fly to the railing overhead. The guy who swings himself down to the ground next to them isn’t _the_ scariest-looking man Sokka has seen in prison so far, but he’s in the top twelve, easy.

“What? We didn’t—”

“Hey,” the prisoner interrupts jovially, “you’re the whistler! I knew you weren’t really a guard.”

Sokka can feel Zuko and Suki’s judgemental eyes on him. Toph has her seeing-feet trick, Aang has his spirity Avatar knowledge, and Sokka has a keenly-developed sense for interpersonal embarrassment. They all have their talents.

Zuko is tired of getting beaten up.

It’s been a lifetime in the making, that exhaustion. He and Azula had separate firebending masters from the time they were toddlers—from the time _Azula_ was a toddler, anyway, considering she started bending first—but that didn’t stop her from convincing him to “spar” every so often as soon as she knew there wasn’t a chance of her losing. He never quite learned not to rise to the bait, but he learned to brace for impact.

For a long time, Zuko considered that the definition of his life. Zhao was an obstacle keeping him down; the Avatar; the insubordinate crew; he’d even seen Uncle that way for a while, frustrated by his insistence that Zuko rebuild his firebending from the ground up instead of moving on to the advanced sets.

He would take the hit, he always did. And then he would get back up again. He would take the mistaken belief that anyone could lay him low and keep him there and shove it back in their faces.

Just remembering all that spite makes Zuko tired.

He hits the floor with a heavy grunt. Two guards twist his arms behind his back. Zuko doesn’t bruise easily, but he bruises often. He knows the ache in his shoulders will be an ugly yellow-blue by morning.

Maybe the cooler will keep the swelling down. Zuko focuses on that: the cooler. The weight of the wrench at his hip, tucked into the waistband of his pants. He landed on it in the fall—good odds that’ll bruise too. Doesn’t matter. He has a job to do.

“That should teach you,” the guard spits as he shoves Zuko into the cold cell.

Zuko will give him this: he’s not wrong. The cold clears his head. His breath of fire warms him to the ends of his fingers. Uncle was right, of course, about the basics.

He falls into a rhythm: find a bolt, twist, breathe, twist, tuck the loose bolt into the curve of his shirt, repeat. The repetitive actions remind him of hammering nails into a roof. He’s marginally less useless at this, and more ready for the work besides. Zuko has never found this kind of thing soothing by nature—he thinks, as he breathes a burst of flame over his numbing fingers, that it would be a good skill to cultivate. Like meditation, like all the things Uncle foisted upon him to _calm the mind._ He was right about those, too.

The handle of the cooler’s door squeals like a pig-chicken. Zuko leaps away from the wall and curls his body around the pile of bolts in his shirt. It’s still too early for Sokka to let him out, unless something has gone wrong. Either way, a problem.

How would someone suffering from the cold look right now? Zuko experiments with a false shiver and decides to keep still. No time to practice; the inner door is already open a crack. He ducks his head to hide the lively color in his cheeks.

“Well, well, well,” says the warden’s voice like volcanic sand. “I never thought I’d find you in here, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko whips his head up. The warden stares down his nose with a victorious tilt to his mouth.

“How did you know who I am?” he croaks. This—this is _bad._

“You’ve managed to make yourself an enemy or two among this crowd of animals,” the warden says. “Impressive, even for a traitor like you.”

Zuko nearly lunges to his feet. The quiet clank of the wrench in his shirt against a shifting bolt reminds him to keep still. He pulls his arms even tighter against himself and growls under his breath instead. He knew he hadn’t imagined the familiar face leering at him last night—he’s going to punch that pirate conman right in his rubbery mouth.

“You’re my special prisoner now,” the warden continues. “And you’d best behave. If these criminals found out who you were, the traitor prince who tried to kill the Fire Lord? Why, they’d tear you to shreds.”

“So what’s in it for you?” Zuko stares stubbornly upward, feeling as small and petulant as a toddler. “Why not tell my father and collect the reward?”

“Oh, in due time, believe me, he’ll happily hand over that reward. Now go back to your shivering.”

The door slams closed. Zuko opens his mouth to let loose a shout of frustration and a burst of fire that melts a patch of frost clean off the wall.

“So,” Suki says. “You’re Sokka’s dad!”

“That’s right.” Hakoda nods with a proud smile. “And you’re the leader of the—” He purses his lips.

“The—”

“No, no, don’t tell me. I’ll get it.” He rubs his chin.

Steaming water laps against the shore. Chit Sang murmurs something quietly to his little entourage, who giggle amongst themselves.

“Do you want a hint?” Suki asks eventually.

Sokka opens the door. He walks into the hallway toward Zuko’s cooler. He sees the warden standing at that very same cooler, turns on his heel, and walks back out.

_Okay. _Okay, okay, okay. No reason to panic. He just needs to get down to the beach, tell Suki, Chit Sang, and dad that the plan isn’t going to work out tonight. They can always try again—though how many times can they use the same con?

Sokka had always assumed the breathing-fire-to-fend-off-killer-hypothermia trick Zuko reportedly pulled at the North Pole was a normal firebender thing, but from the look Chit Sang gave Zuko when they hammered out the plan, he thinks that might not be true. So they can only put Zuko in the cooler, and if Zuko lands himself in there enough times the guards will know something’s up.

Even if they _don’t,_ the warden is already sniffing around, who knows why. Maybe he’s onto them. Maybe he knows who Zuko is.

Sokka finds himself at the shoreline before he’s managed to calm himself down. He’s done more of the opposite, actually.

“What’s wrong?” Suki asks immediately. Dad comes up behind her with an identical look of concern.

“We’ve got—Who are they?” Sokka goggles at the pair sitting near Chit Sang.

“This here’s my girl and my best buddy,” he explains. Chit Sang’s Girl waves cheerily. “They’re coming too.”

“Fine.” Sokka shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter, because we’ve got a problem. I think the warden’s onto us. I just saw him at the coolers.”

Suki’s eyes go sharp and hard.

“What did _he_ want?” she says through her teeth.

“I don’t know, but it means that cooler isn’t going anywhere just yet.” He can barely look her or dad in the eye, but he forces himself to. They deserve it. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s not your fault,” Suki says tenderly. She takes his hand. “We’ll figure a way out of here. I don’t blame you.”

“I do,” says Chit Sang. “This was a waste of time. Let’s roll, baby.” Chit Sang, Chit Sang’s Girl, and the Best Buddy crunch across the rocky shore back to the bulk of the prison.

“Not very polite, is he?” dad says once they’re out of earshot, then sighs. “I was really hoping this would work.”

“I’m sorry, dad,” Sokka says again. Shame hangs around his neck, heavier than it’s been since he watched the Caldera grow smaller and smaller behind him.

“No, no,” dad rushes to his side and puts an arm around him. “Don’t blame yourself, son. I’m only disappointed because—Well.” He chuckles quietly. Sokka’s heart lifts. He’s shocked by how much the sound reminds him of Katara. “I have an idea, and it’s a whole lot worse. Who wants to hear it?”

* * *

“Help!” The Duke’s voice echoes through the temple. It bounces off the pillars of the courtyard, hits the chest of a stone likeness of an Air Nomad, rattles down the empty hallways, and makes its way back.

Aang and Katara find him at the same time.

The Duke dangles off a ledge at the edge of the temple by his hands. He’s nearly thirty feet above the temple floor, and straight drop down would send him falling away into the fog of the canyon. His legs kick desperately at empty air. He’s not even wearing his helmet.

“I’m coming!” Aang shouts. His head whips back and forth. “Wait, where’s my staff?”

One of The Duke’s hands slips. A startled cry bursts from his throat.

“Never mind,” Aang says. He takes off from the ground on a quick stream of wind, lands against the far wall, and kicks off again.

“Hold on, Duke!” Katara calls.

“I’m not,” The Duke hollers back, irritation laced through his fear, “a bird!”

Aang reaches him a moment later, one hand and one foot hooked over the ledge like a spidermonkey. He loops his free arm under The Duke just as the boy starts to fall, dipping briefly under the weight before pulling him to his chest. Katara sighs with relief.

“There we—Hey!” Aang’s eyes go wide and his hand slips off the ledge, briefly windmilling before he wraps it around The Duke, whose hysterical kicking has only ramped up in intensity and is threatening to knock Aang off the wall.

The two of them dangle off the ledge by Aang’s foot.

“Hang on.” Aang takes a deep breath to bend them back into the temple—and then The Duke’s hand smacks him in the face.

Katara watches with dismay and a healthy dose of embarrassment as Aang releases his massive breath in surprise. He swings backward like a pendulum, slamming his own head into the temple’s ceiling. His foot slips off the ledge. He curls himself around The Duke as the two start to fall.

It’s not Ba Sing Se—but it’s close. It’s closer than any other time Katara has seen Aang descend through the air: straight and inevitable like a dropped stone, not the leaf on the wind he usually is. It strikes an out-of-tune note in her chest.

Water from the fountain sweeps outward, following the wave of her arms. It freezes in a high concave ramp. Aang’s backside meets the top of the slide just as it solidifies. He and The Duke shoot down the curve of it, voices meeting in a high harmony of a scream, eyes wider than the moon.

Katara takes a moment to be satisfied with her work—until she realizes where she’s standing.

She joins in their chorus: a long _“Aaaaaaaah”_ punctuated by a short but emphatic _“Oof.”_ Aang, Katara, and The Duke roll halfway across the temple floor in a tangle of limbs.

The second they come to a stop, The Duke stands up, brushes himself off, says “Thank you,” and walks away. Katara stays where she is. Aang’s eyes are huge. His breathing is deep and quick. Katara can feel his hammering heartbeat.

“Hey,” she greets dumbly.

“Hey,” he says.

There is a quiet, steady _drip drip drip_ as her ice slide starts to melt in the heat. Katara props herself up on one elbow. Aang, across from her, mirrors the movement.

“Um, thanks,” she says, “for grabbing him. That was some quick thinking.”

“You too,” Aang replies.

_Drip drip drip._

“I’m s—”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” she breathes.

“Katara, I’m sorry.” Aang holds eye contact with her for the first time in days. “I’m sorry I lied, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to say I’m sorry.” He sits up the rest of the way and waits, cross-legged. Katara mirrors the movement.

“I’m sorry too,” she says.

Saying it breaks open the dam in her heart; forgiveness comes rushing out. Aang’s eyes are wet. She feels the answering sting in her own—it feels stupid and petty all of a sudden, the grudge she’s been nursing all week. She knows why she was so angry, but the memory of it is pitiful compared to the things that actually matter.

Katara holds out open arms. Smiling, Aang hugs her back.

* * *

“Lee!” Hakoda calls. He spots the boy halfway across the yard, shaggy hair falling into his narrowed eyes as he scans the crowd of prisoners. He didn’t think the kid had trouble hearing, but they’ve only spoken in close quarters before. Hakoda cups hands around his mouth and calls his name again: “Lee!”

“Lee?” Suki inquires.

From the corner of his eye, Hakoda sees Sokka gesture frantically at her, probably an indication that he’ll explain later. Strange—he assumed Lee and Suki would have met by now.

“Are you talking to me?” grunts a man with a hideous snake tattoo crawling up his neck. Not hideous by virtue of being a neck tattoo, of course—Hakoda’s simply taken aback by the shoddy craftsmanship of it. The blowouts alone are enough to make him wince.

“No.” Hakoda shakes his head. “Someone else. Sorry.”

Neck Tattoo—Lee, Hakoda assumes—gives him a suspicious glare before pointedly walking halfway across the yard.

“There’s a lot of Lees in the Fire Nation,” Sokka says apologetically.

_Their_ Lee has spotted them by now. He ducks under another prisoner’s gesticulating arm as he dashes toward their little group.

“It’s good to see you again,” Hakoda says once he reaches them. He offers an arm in greeting. Lee takes it, seeming a little dazed—though that’s not necessarily a surprise, given that he looks like he tried to break out of his cell using his own face as a battering ram.

Hakoda frowns. The kid has taken his share of beatings and then some. At least he’s free of any fresh burns, as far as Hakoda can see.

“Good,” says Sokka, “we’re all here.”

“Now, we just have to—” Hakoda stops. “Are you alright, Lee?”

The boy flinches at the sound of his name. He’s pale beneath the violent array of marks across his face. His eyes narrow and he looks to Sokka.

“Do we have time for this?” Lee asks. Sokka blinks.

“Time for _what?”_

“Last time I had something to confess, I sort of jumped into it. I’m trying to think things through more often.”

“Confess?” Hakoda steps closer, suddenly worried about being overheard even in the ambient noise of the yard.

“Nothing!” Sokka blurts with a frantic hand motion. “Why would he have anything to confess?”

Hakoda can at least feel secure in the knowledge that he didn’t raise a liar.

“Just let him say it,” Suki chimes in gently.

Sokka’s wide eyes—so much like Kya’s the resemblance makes Hakoda ache—dart from her, to their friend, to his father. He glances at the sun’s position in the sky, then shrugs at Lee.

“It’s your call,” he sighs. “But,” he turns to Hakoda again, “dad, promise you won’t freak out?”

Now _that_ isn’t what he was hoping to hear today. Hakoda crosses his arms.

“I make no such promises.”

He’s aiming for a joke to break off a chunk of the tension, but both boys—and Suki, whom he’s known for barely a day but he can already tell isn’t cowed by much—share a glance and a grimace.

Lee hangs his head and takes a breath like he’s getting ready for a fight. Hakoda has seen earthbenders in the army who breathe that way before they practice their bending.

“Chief Hakoda,” he says, raising his head to look him in the eye, “the truth is—”

That’s as far as Lee gets before he’s tackled to the ground.

“What the—Get off—!”

“Warden didn’t do his job with you—”

“—of me, what do you—”

“—gotta do everything myself—”

“Hold on, hey! You’re that—”

“—try to light my ship on fire _this_ time, you bleeding little—”

“—pirate!”

“—prince!”

“Hey!” The pirate is lifted off of Zuko by the back of his shirt like a meadow vole in the talons of a hawk. Chit Sang throws him over his head, tosses him once in the air, and shouts, “Riot!”

The yard bursts into cacophonous shouting and firebending. Chit Sang tosses the pirate aside like a sack of so much garbage.

“Impressive,” Hakoda mutters. He helps Zuko to his feet, patting him once on the back. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Zuko wheezes. The pirate had gotten a hand around his throat right before Chit Sang hauled him off. He swallows a few times, testing the ache.

“Great, awesome, everything’s going according to plan,” Sokka says. “Let’s—”

“Hold on a minute, son,” Hakoda says. Sokka visibly deflates. “Lee. You were about to tell me something?”

“Um.” Zuko swallows.

“What was it that man called you?” He raises a heavy eyebrow.

“About that.” Zuko runs a hand through his hair. “I’m—”

“Gaaargh!” Wiry arms wrap around Zuko’s throat from behind. He feels his eyes bug out for a half second before instinct takes over. Zuko rolls with the man’s momentum, ducking his own head down, and twists the grappling arms off.

“Stop that!” Zuko shouts as he throws the pirate halfway across the yard. Chit Sang tosses in a quick kick to the man’s ribs to keep him down this time. The pirate groans, but doesn’t get up.

“On second thought, this might not be the best time,” Hakoda says.

“No, I said I was going to tell you the truth. You’ve been kind to me. I don’t have much in the way of honor these days, but I owe you that much.” He puts the heel of his hand against his fist, the sign of the flame, and bows. “My name is Zuko. And until a couple weeks ago, I was the prince of the Fire Nation.”

Hakoda says nothing for a handful of seconds that feels like a year. Zuko risks a glance up. The Chief has a tight-lipped look on his face. Behind him, Sokka looks ready to tear his own hair out.

“Sokka,” Hakoda says at last, looking to his son.

“Yeah, dad?” Sokka squeaks.

“I’m assuming you knew that?” He tilts his head toward Zuko, who has sweated enough in the last thirty seconds to raise the waterline of the lake by a foot.

“Yeah, dad.”

“Alright.” Hakoda nods. He stands squarely in front of Zuko, arms crossed, and says, “I never got the hang of your people’s etiquette, so I hope you’ll forgive me for not bowing to royalty.”

Zuko rises from his bow in disbelief. The Chief’s lips quirk in a tiny smile. Sokka releases an audible breath.

“Thank you,” Zuko says. He doesn’t realize how much tension there was in every muscle from his face to his toes until it releases all at once. His mind didn’t think of it, but his body remembered the last time he bowed his head to someone’s father.

“Don’t mention it.” Hakoda winks. “Sokka, what next?”

“Now all we need to do is grab the warden and get to the gondolas.”

“And how do we do that?” Zuko asks.

“I’m not sure.”

“Ugh, I thought you—”

“Hey, uh, fellas,” Chit Sang interrupts, staring out over the roiling sea of rioting prisoners. “I think your girlfriend’s taking care of it.”

“Your uncle’s office is nice,” Ty Lee comments, looking perfectly at ease in the straight-backed chair he keeps across from the desk to make any guests uncomfortable.

“It’s tacky,” Mai sighs. Azula, lurking in the corner where she made herself immediately busy examining the warden’s collection of prisoners’ confiscated personal items, hums in agreement.

“How long does he expect us to wait?” She turns a blown-glass pendant in her hand, watches the way it catches the light for a moment, then tosses it carelessly back onto the shelf.

_Us,_ Mai scoffs in her head. _He only invited me._

But she doesn’t really need the Fire Lord’s money, and it’s not as if Azula would have given her the credit even if she’d caught Zuko when she was supposed to. Mai should count herself lucky Azula even deigned to let her read her uncle’s letter before showing up at Mai’s house with an airship ready to go.

Despite the pointless mind games of it all, Mai is wondering the same thing Azula is. Everyone in her family is neurotically punctual—her mother’s side especially. It’s unlike Uncle to keep someone waiting like this unless he’s trying to make them sweat. He wouldn’t treat royalty like that, and he definitely wouldn’t do it to _Mai._

Well, she gets her answer.

The door opens. It’s not the warden on the other side.

“Your highness, ma’am, ma’am,” greets a guard whose general demeanor is so condescending Mai starts to imagine pinning him to the ceiling before he’s finished his sentence. “I’ve been sent to protect you.”

Azula’s eyes narrow to suspicious golden slits.

“Protect us from what?”

“We’re on lockdown. That’s all I’m permitted to tell—Augh!” His back hits the wall with a dull _thump._ Azula’s hand, sharp-nailed fingers curled into the collar of his armor, holds him there like a bolt through a stuffed and mounted mothbat.

“I’d prefer it if you told me a little more than that,” Azula says sweetly.

“Th-there’s a riot in the yard,” he says. Azula’s knuckles nearly brush his throat. He flinches as if they’re scalding hot. Mai is pretty sure they’re not, but you never know.

“Of course.” She glances back at Mai and rolls her eyes with a sarcastic pout. “Your uncle couldn’t even be bothered to stop by and say hello on his way to put down a riot. I thought your family was closer than that.”

“He—” The guard’s throat bobs when Azula’s eyes snap back to him. “He couldn’t. Some prisoners took advantage of the riot. They took the warden as a hostage and they’re trying to escape.”

Mai barely has time to think _That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard_ before she finds herself sprinting out of the room. Azula and Ty Lee aren’t far behind her, and she knows exactly why. All three surely shared the same thought at the same moment.

_Who else could be stupid enough to pull something like that?_

The click of the lever rings across the open platform. Machinery shudders under Mai’s feet. The gondola starts to move.

Zuko, idiot that he is, wastes most of his precious few seconds trying to break the lever in half while his one ride out of here lifts off the platform. As he turns into a final, solid kick, he spies Mai. His face falls into shock, then fear, then anger.

Actually, that part is probably because he sees Azula.

Zuko redirects his momentum into a short-distance sprint right off the edge of the tower. Mai chokes on her own heart the second he becomes airborne a hundred feet above a boiling lake—but she doesn’t slow down. She has longer legs than Azula or Ty Lee and a split-second head start. Outrunning the two of them in a mad dash for Zuko feels old hat by now, but not enough to start getting comfortable.

The Water Tribe boy catches Zuko’s arm. Zuko catches the edge of the gondala’s window with his other hand. He climbs inside, then turns to look out the window as the gondola slowly ticks further and further away. His eyes meet Mai’s. She finally stops.

There he goes again, disappearing on her. Watching her as he goes.

Mai reaches toward the lever to pull him back by force. The bronze trap of Zuko’s terrified eyes snaps shut around her throat.

“Who is that?” Sokka does a double take over Zuko’s shoulder.

“It’s Mai.” Zuko blinks, blinks again, trying to clear whatever is wrong with his eyes. It looks like—there’s no way, but it’s almost like—

Mai takes a step _away_ from the lever. Azula is gaining on her, Ty Lee at her heels, so maybe Mai is saving the honor for the Crown Princess. It’ll be another victory under her belt. Azula never could resist the urge to gloat.

But—

People take one look at Mai and think she’s given them everything they need to know about her. She tends to prefer it that way. The clothes say _Do not touch,_ the cold calm of her face says _Do not touch,_ not infrequently her mouth says “Do not touch.”

She’s always got something up her sleeve. Usually that something is two dozen knives.

This time, it’s not. Or—it probably still is, but not the only thing.

Her left leg flies out, perfectly parallel to the ground, and finishes what Zuko started with the lever. The sound of breaking metal reaches him over the grind of the gondola’s wires. In the unfocused corner of his vision, Zuko sees Azula—_Azula_—stop running.

He’d love to see the look on her face. He can’t manage to tear his eyes away from Mai.

“What are you _doing?”_ Sokka shouts in his ear. This is the first thing that alerts Zuko to the fact that he has climbed halfway out the window and is reaching his hand as far as he can.

The heartbeat in his ears, the creak of metal gears against metal wires, the sound of shock Sokka makes—it all blurs into a cacophonous argument, his mind against his body, a _You can’t trust her, you idiot,_ up against the foolish, irrepressible reflex that has extended his hand the same way towards a crewman who hated him and an admiral who tried to have him killed.

“I’ll catch you,” he hears his own voice say.

It’s too far, and Zuko knows it. Even he couldn’t make that jump. But Mai’s face twitches—behind her, Azula is on the move again—and a moment later she is a blur of black and dark red speeding the last few feet to the edge of the platform.

Her arms don’t reach for Zuko the way he expects—too far, too _far,_ he thinks desperately.

Instead, Mai’s hands make some movement at her waist as her feet leave the ground, and suddenly her outer robe flares out behind her like a cloud of smoke. The sash that held it closed flies like a whip, a three-pointed knife tied to the end.

It wraps securely around the metal line. Momentum carries her a few more feet before she starts to fall. The sash goes taut as Mai reaches the lowest point of the arc—and she swings forward.

Zuko traces the trajectory of her flight, a soaring confidence rising in his chest. She’s on her way straight toward the window—_she’s going to make it._

The sound of ripping cloth sends all that confidence tumbling into the lake.

For the next few seconds, all he knows is—Mai’s sharp eyes flicking from the tearing sash to Zuko’s outstretched arm—the sensation of falling as she lets go to reach for him—the swoop of _actually_ falling as he throws himself over the edge of the window—Sokka’s arms around his waist—Hakoda’s bark of alarm—

He finds his face a foot from Mai’s. Her feet dangle over the lake, nothing but steam between her and a square mile of boiling water. Strong hands hang securely around his wrists.

“Little help here,” Sokka grunts from behind him. Zuko can only assume Hakoda, Suki, and Chit Sang have formed a human chain inside the gondola to reel them in.

Zuko opens his mouth. He feels like he should say _something._ They didn’t leave things on a great note last time—he’s grateful, and baffled, and a strange mix of happy she’s alive and angry that she pulled something so stupid.

The irony is not lost on Zuko. He’s not _that_ un-self aware, thanks.

“Aw,” Mai says dryly, looking him dead in the eye as they make their way slowly into the gondola. “I was planning to go for a swim today.”

Zuko can’t help it—her sarcasm breaks a painful tension he’s felt since that pirate ratted him out, since they nabbed the warden, since Mai jumped off a balcony to make an impossible leap because he asked her to.

He laughs. He laughs until he can’t breathe.

“What are you doing here?” Sokka demands the moment they’re both inside.

Zuko sobers immediately, pushing himself away from the metal wall he’d been braced against. Sokka doesn’t draw his sword in the confined space, but he looks like he’s strongly considering it.

“Saving the jerk I helped get thrown in jail,” Mai says flatly.

From the floor, the warden lets out a muffled yell of surprise.

“Hi, Uncle,” she greets casually.

Zuko inserts himself between Mai and the rest—Suki in particular looks thunderous at her presence. He ignores them for a moment—privately glad Sokka has his back, for all he knows how much what Mai just did must have cost her—and extends his own peace offering.

“Does this mean we’re even now?”

“You’re the reason I’ve been in trouble with Azula for weeks,” she says. “We were already even.” Mai pauses, stares out the window for a second, and shrugs. “Call this one a favor.”

Zuko doesn’t know how to thank her—and doesn’t get the chance to figure it out.

Metallic shrieking rings through the air. The gondola shudders to a halt, throwing Zuko half off his feet. He stumbles backward into Suki, who falls into Sokka, who nearly goes out the window himself.

“What’s happening?” Sokka yelps. He grabs the side of the wall and hauls his torso back inside. In an instant, he’s next to Zuko at the window opening that faces the prison.

“Who’s that?” Hakoda peers over his son’s head.

“That’s a problem,” Zuko replies.

* * *

The Duke pulls Aang’s staff out from behind the statue. He looks around for a second, shrugs, and props it against the wall. He’ll find it sooner or later.

Toph is still where he left her: in the long, round shaft where she earthbends with Haru sometimes. She lies on her back in the patch of soil interrupted by sparse weeds, which grow stubbornly despite the inconsistent sunlight that comes in through the open ceiling.

He stands next to her, waiting. She sighs.

“Pay up, Toph,” The Duke says with a grin. He holds out an open palm.

“Okay, fair’s fair.” She digs in her pocket for a second before finding four gold pieces, two lychee nuts, and a cool gemstone—the agreed-upon amount. “It’s all there, I swear.”

The Duke takes the haul. He bites one of the gold pieces and then, satisfied, bites one of the lychee nuts.

* * *

Zuko shoots Mai a look as he’s about to swing himself out the window, one that says, as clearly as if it were written on his forehead: _Azula’s out for blood._

Mai tilts an eyebrow in response: _Mine, specifically._

Zuko nods, then climbs onto the roof behind his friends.

Mai isn’t complaining that he leaves her behind this time. She’s not thrilled about the prospect of meeting Azula after not just the little failures she’s been racking up lately but an actual betrayal, the difference between death by a thousand cuts and decapitation.

Then again, they both end the same way.

With every disembodied _thud_ that rattles the ceiling, the older Water Tribe man’s quick eyes dart toward the source of the noise as if he can see through metal if only he tries hard enough. Hakoda, she remembers from her uncle’s letter: the Southern Chief, leader of the fastest fleet in the world, thorn in the side of anyone who looks twice at Chameleon Bay. Big get.

The telltale _whoosh_ of firebending echoes from above. Mai reflexively touches fingers to the bo-shuriken at her wrist.

What’s worse than being shot full of lightning, if Mai is honest—and she can be, in her own head, always the only place she could ever say exactly what she meant—is the thought of looking Ty Lee in the eye. Mai can’t imagine what it would be like to stand opposite her. She doesn’t want to find out.

The gondola rocks wildly again, and Mai sees two things at once.

The first is the Water Tribe boy’s legs dangling over the edge of the roof, just outside the window. The second is her uncle wriggling free of his bonds.

Mai closes a hand around her uncle’s crossed wrists. She tightens the knot and kicks him back to the floor. He grunts. The gag in his mouth muffles his words beyond intelligibility, but she can imagine the lecture easily enough on her own.

“Sorry,” she apologizes unapologetically. Then, turning to the big prisoner who has finally noticed his charge’s near-escape, says, “You had one job.”

“Hey—” he objects.

Mai is already climbing out the window and onto the roof.

The scene she finds above plays out with the inevitable slowness of a nightmare: Zuko, crouched at the edge of the gondola holding the falling Water Tribe boy by the forearms the way he held Mai minutes ago, has his back to Azula. The girl in prisoner’s garb is busy meeting Ty Lee blow-for-blow, cornered and unable to help. Azula’s first two fingers descend through the air, pointed like a poison-tipped arrow aiming straight for her brother’s unprotected neck.

Time begins anew when a dagger hits Azula’s bracer and knocks her wrist off course. A jet of fire the color of a blistering summer sky ruffles Zuko’s hair as it passes.

Everyone on the gondola stops—except the Water Tribe boy, who has the brains to finish scrambling back to relative safety. Mai feels the moment Azula’s eyes lock onto her like a knife to the throat.

Azula moves first. Mai knew she would. She forgets about Zuko, she forgets about the Water Tribe kid and the girl fighting with him, she forgets about the men in the gondola under her feet and the dizzying drop into the boiling crater of a volcano under that. For a moment, Mai even forgets about Ty Lee.

All she knows is the cold gleam in Azula’s eyes, the animal snarl that rage has made of her face, and the last fraction of a second before Mai can let her shuriken fly. Lightning is faster than steel, but Mai can be faster than Azula—

_Thud. Thud-thud. Thud._

Ty Lee is faster than the both of them.

Azula’s gasp as she falls is the only sound in the world. Her descent lasts an age. Mai feels more like a statue than she ever has—the ghost in a haunted object, an unwilling witness. Her eyes track the trajectory of the chi-blocked body and come to rest at the conclusion: the nearby edge of the unsteady gondola. Azula is dead weight.

For the first time in the years they’ve known each other, Mai sees fear in her eyes.

Azula’s armor scrapes against the metal roof with a sick screeching sound. She does a half-turn as she slides like a layer of thick snow melting off the side of a mountain in spring. Her face disappears over the edge.

Azula is strangely silent as she falls to her death. She doesn’t start screaming until Zuko grabs her by the ankle.

He hauls his sister back up with a grunt that contains more emotion in its single syllable than Mai has ever let herself express over the course of a full day.

“What are you—” the Water Tribe boy starts to demand over the sound of Azula cursing them all to barren corners of the universe that no spirit has seen. Zuko glances at him sharply. It’s a short staring contest, but clearly a fraught one. The boy nods once. “Fine. But we’re leaving her here.”

“Deal,” Zuko agrees.

“You’re _all_ fools,” Azula spits against the gondola’s roof.

“Come on.” Ty Lee’s tug to Mai’s arm reminds her that she is, in fact, a human being capable of independent ambulation. “Let’s get out of here.”

“And how do you expect to do that?” the girl in the prisoner’s uniform says.

“That’s how.” The Water Tribe boy points toward the rim of the crater. A gondola on the second line has just begun its journey toward the island. “There must be a mechanism on the other side, just like the one back at the prison. Ty Lee,” he turns to her, “can you get over there and stop it?”

“You’re really going to trust _her?”_ the prisoner girl scoffs.

“We don’t have a choice.”

“They’ll just cut the other line,” she insists.

“I don’t think so.” He shakes his head, speaking at a quick and eager clip. “The guards have to get on and off the island somehow. They can’t risk breaking both lines, and we’ll keep the warden with us when we go, as insurance.”

The girl opens her mouth, clearly prepared to keep arguing.

“You could always come along to keep an eye on me,” Ty Lee suggests cheerfully. She smiles, and despite the gong-like ringing in Mai’s head at everything that’s just happened, she nearly smiles too. “That is, if you think you can keep up.”

Ty Lee flips easily onto the wire. She waves, then starts running.

“Oh,” the girl says through her teeth, “I can keep up.”

She jumps, wraps both hands around the wire, swings herself in a semicircle to land perfectly balanced on top of it, and takes off after Ty Lee.

The Water Tribe boy watches them go for a few seconds. He mutters something to himself and turns to Zuko.

“I’m going to tell my dad and Chit Sang the new plan,” he says. “You’re okay up here?” His eyes dart unsubtly toward Azula’s prone form, then to Mai.

Zuko nods. The boy claps him on the shoulder before climbing back into the gondola.

Then it’s just Zuko and Mai, alone.

Plus Azula.

“I never expected _this _from you,” Azula spits. Mai knows her well enough to hear the strain in her voice and wishes she couldn’t. It would be scarier that way, but it would be easier. “You weren’t as subtle as you thought before the invasion, but I gave you too much credit. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“And I guess you don’t know people as well as you think you do,” Mai replies simply.

Azula’s face collapses like wet clay for the span of a single heartbeat. A moment later, it’s smooth and perfect again. She turns her attention to Zuko.

“You always were envious of me. Be my guest, Zuko,” Azula says. “You’re welcome to her. Traitors only have each other to trust. Doesn’t it just kill you? To know she’ll bury her pretty knives in your back too?”

Mai’s eyes cut to Zuko’s face. He doesn’t look at her—he holds Azula’s stare.

“I’ll take my chances. So far, she’s been nice enough to throw them at my face.”

Mai’s throat squeezes shut. Zuko finally glances at her, a quick golden iris in the corner of his scarred eye and the smallest smile underneath it. She returns it as well as she can.

“Need a lift?” comes a voice from behind. Mai turns, and there are Ty Lee and the prisoner girl on the second gondola. The former is waving happily and the latter has her hands cupped around her mouth, grin so wide it’s visible behind them.

Mai moves to the edge of the roof. She eyeballs the gap—less than the leap from the platform that nearly killed her, at least. She’s no optimist, but if ever there were a time for it…

“Can you make the jump?” Zuko asks. Mai looks across the span of empty air and sees Ty Lee. Her eyes crinkle with a smile. She holds out her hands.

“Sure,” Mai says. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Zuko laughs under his breath.

“Just boiling to death. No big deal,” he replies.

“Exactly. I wish it could be something exciting for once.”

The Water Tribe chief comes up onto the roof with the big man, who has Mai’s uncle hoisted over his shoulder. Hakoda shares a silent nod with Zuko before taking a few steps back and, with a short running start, jumps across the gap. His heel lands half an inch from the edge of the other gondola. The prisoner girl steadies him by the forearm.

Zuko follows with an easier jump and a solid landing. The chief and the girl look surprised. Not everyone has Zuko’s ridiculous leg strength.

Mai locks eyes with Ty Lee. She takes steps back, _one, two, three, four._

“You should both hope,” Azula says, “that I never see your faces again.”

Mai pauses with her weight back on her heel. Ty Lee’s mouth tightens, although she’s certainly too far away to hear.

“I do,” Mai says.

She jumps, and she doesn’t look back. Ty Lee’s hands are warm when they catch her.

Chit Sang heaves the warden across the gap between gondolas like a sailor with a sack of dried sea prunes. Zuko and dad catch him the same way. Sokka expects Chit Sang to follow their captive across, with himself bringing up the rear.

Instead, he turns to Sokka.

“What are you—Hey! No, wait—” Sokka protests frantically. Chit Sang closes a large hand around his shoulder and stoops to scoop him up with the other arm. “Stop, seriously, I appreciate the offer, but I can totally make the juu_uuuuuuump!”_

The airship hisses and groans like a dying komodo rhino, loud machinery rattling through its metal bulk. Despite the noise, no human voices join in to distract from the heat on the bridge, somewhere between a simmer and a boil. Mai doesn’t mean the lack of ventilation.

“We should do introductions,” Ty Lee suggests.

“Sure,” the prisoner girl snaps without skipping a beat. “Everyone, these,” she gestures to Mai and Ty Lee, “are two thirds of the reason I was in prison.”

_“Who _are you?” Mai asks flatly.

The girl throws her shoulders back. She plants her feet like she’s getting ready to throw the next person to tick her off through the wide front windows. Behind her, the Water Tribe boy grimaces.

“Suki,” she says, “the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors.”

“Oh! I remember you,” Ty Lee chirps. “You girls were _so_ much fun to fight.”

“Kyoshi—” Zuko chokes. Mai glances over her shoulder to see him looking like he just swallowed a crabapple lemon whole. “Uh.”

“Yeah, you kind of burned down my village,” Suki says.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbles. Suki waves a hand dismissively as if it’s all water under the bridge.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out.” She sounds almost fond; her sweet face softens for half of a second. It hardens like igneous rock when she turns toward Mai and Ty Lee as if awaiting another apology.

Mai shares a glance with Ty Lee. She shrugs.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Mai sighs, “we left the third reason you were in prison flat on her face above a volcanic lake. So.”

“She’s not going to be happy about that one,” Ty Lee adds.

“My name is Hakoda,” the chief interrupts without looking away from the airship’s control panel. “This is my son, Sokka. Sokka, are you going to introduce me to the rest of your friends?”

_“Friends_ is generous,” Sokka mutters. Silently, Mai agrees.

“I’m Ty Lee!”

“Mai.”

“I’m Zuko—But I guess you… already know me. Sort of.”

“Chit Sang,” says the big man with a little wave. “Where are we going? I got a buddy on the south side of Chung-Ling if we need to lay low.”

“About that…” says Zuko. “Sokka, did you explain, you know. Who we are?”

“I heard you telling the boss here that you’re the prince,” Chit Sang says with a shrug. “Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not into politics.”

“We’ll see if you still feel that way when you meet a good friend of ours.” Sokka crosses his arms.

Suki hides a giggle behind her hand and nudges him in the bicep. The bridge of the ship isn’t big, but Mai is still startled by how quickly Suki’s managed to drift across the room and fall into orbit around the Water Tribe boy. There’s a magnetic energy between the two that makes Mai want to puke in her mouth a little bit.

“Where is everyone, by the way? I’d like to know where I’m flying this thing,” Hakoda says genially.

“Just keep heading north for now.”

“Hang on.” Chit Sang stands to his full height, which has probably historically succeeded in intimidating people who aren’t this particular group of dangerous teens and one token chieftain. “You wanna back up and explain what you mean by your _good friend?”_

“How long were you in prison, Chit Sang?” Sokka asks with a bold smile.

“A while,” he answers, wary.

“Did you ever get the news that the Avatar is back?”

Machinery hisses. The air fills with steam and tension.

“No,” Chit Sang says in disbelief.

“Yep,” Zuko confirms.

“You’re messing with me.”

“He’s a good kid,” Hakoda says. He still hasn’t turned away from the wide front windows of the airship, but the tone and tenor of his voice make it clear he’s got every other sense locked onto Chit Sang. “There isn’t much we wouldn’t do to protect him.”

Mai freezes. She knows Chit Sang wasn’t the only one that comment was aimed at. Ty Lee’s posture and expression don’t change, but her _aura_ must be turning some color or other.

“Guess that means I’m better off sticking with you,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of the Avatar’s secret gang.”

“And they’re great at staying secret,” Mai adds dryly. The smart thing to do would be to keep quiet, but at this point, she really, honestly has nothing left to lose. Wasn’t her mother always telling her to keep out of trouble? Now she’s in about as much trouble as it’s possible for one person to find.

It feels like freedom. That’s new.

“Where are we dropping these two?” Suki asks, jerking a thumb at Mai and Ty Lee.

“Well…” Sokka says.

He, Suki, and Zuko have a complicated, silent conversation mostly consisting of Sokka’s eyebrows, Suki’s frowning mouth, and Zuko’s hands nearly pulling his own hair out.

“We’re not _keeping_ them,” Suki blurts.

“They’d be Zuko’s responsibility,” Sokka says. Zuko nods.

“We’re not a pair of stray poodlemonkeys,” Mai drawls.

“You’d make a cute poodlemonkey,” says Ty Lee.

“Thanks,” Mai replies.

“The Fire Nation felon is bad enough,” Suki argues.

“Hey!” Chit Sang objects.

“How do we know they’re not still in the princess’s pocket?” she demands overtop of him.

“If we know anything about Azula,” Sokka says, “it’s that she’d never let herself look bad on purpose.”

“She’d be dead if I hadn’t caught her,” Zuko adds quietly.

And if that statement isn’t a mood-killer, Mai doesn’t know what is. Even Suki shuts her mouth.

“Should we jump ship now?” Mai asks Ty Lee loudly after an insufferable beat of silence. “It would be better than listening to them argue.”

“I’ll help you,” Suki snarls sweetly.

“Don’t make me turn this thing around,” Hakoda says over his shoulder, halfway between a joke and a warning.

“Suki.” Sokka steps closer to the girl and touches her shoulder. Her hackles lower slightly. Mai can’t help but notice that she’s placed herself firmly between Ty Lee and Sokka like a human shield.

Suki looks back at him. She nods.

“What do you think, dad?” Sokka turns to his father, hand still on Suki’s shoulder.

Hakoda is silent for long enough that Mai drops a blade into her hand, hidden in her sleeve. Just in case.

“The princess will be after all our heads,” he says at last. “That’s not likely to change whether the two of you stick around or not. Clearly you have more of a history with my son and his friends, so I’ll leave it up to them, but so far you haven’t given me a reason to distrust you.”

Mai takes a second to catch and release her surprise that he’s decided to address the two of them directly.

“Besides,” Hakoda adds, “the last Fire Nation defector I brought on board worked out pretty well, all things considered.” He smiles at Zuko, who looks flustered by the attention.

Sokka looks from his dad to Suki. Suki looks from Sokka to Zuko. Zuko looks to Mai.

“How about it?” Zuko gives her a wry little half-smile that makes him look four years younger. “Want to stay?”

Zuko, asking Mai to stay. Bringing her with him.

She looks at Ty Lee.

Her big, gray eyes take in the scene—one-time enemies and a one-time friend, a criminal and a chieftain, an airship stolen from the girl who introduced them in the first place. Ty Lee smiles like it’s the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen. She turns to Mai.

“Remember when I joined the circus?” Ty Lee asks her.

Mai hears everything she isn’t saying. Something new is calling a little louder. For the first time, Mai hears it too.

“Sure.” Mai turns to Zuko and shrugs. “It’s not like we have anything better to do.”

Zuko’s smile stretches wide enough to crinkle the edge of his scar and the yellowing bruise under his other eye. He doesn’t look younger anymore. Mai likes it better this way.

* * *

“I’m glad they’re finally talking again,” Haru says. “I love Katara, but listening to her complain was… getting kind of hard.”

“Tell me about it,” Teo sighs. “I never appreciated how difficult Aang’s job of keeping balance is until I had to do it for him. Maybe _we_ should be the Avatar instead.”

“No thanks,” Haru laughs.

“Yeah, on second thought, I like it better when problems work themselves out.”

The Duke pokes his head into the room.

“You’re welcome,” he says, before popping back out and disappearing to some other corner of the temple.

Teo looks at Haru.

“What was that about?”

Haru shrugs.

* * *

Toph knows Sokka and Zuko didn’t actually go fishing, but she entertains herself by imagining the two of them casting a line into a Fire Nation prison and yanking out Sokka’s dad with the new guy hanging onto his ankle.

A vibration rattles through the airship, down the ramp, and into the stone under Toph’s feet. The smile drops off her face.

“Who else is in there?”

“Um,” Zuko says. He has to be the one to say it since Sokka and Katara are busy hugging their dad, and Toph wouldn’t want them to stop except this is kind of important because—

“Hey.” Knife girl leans in the open entryway of the airship.

“Hi, guys!” The circus freak is right behind her.

Later, Toph will look back with great fondness on the fact that she and Katara start shouting at the same time.

“This is, um, your room for now. Unless you want a different one. We don’t really use them anymore, so you kind of have your pick—”

“It’s so… cozy!” Ty Lee says.

“Do you have one with a beachfront view?” asks Mai.

Zuko shakes his head with a smile.

“I know it’s not what you’re used to,” he says apologetically.

Mai catches that—_you. _Meaning it is what _he’s_ used to. The innocuous distinction sets off a firework of a realization in her mind. The luxury of being back in the Fire Nation was the exception, not the rule, to the last three years of Zuko’s life. She doesn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that before.

“We’ll survive.” Mai walks into the little cell—it doesn’t even have a door—and gives it a performatively critical eye. Someone must have cleaned up a bit in the last century, but the corners are full of desiccated leaves and a layer of dirt. “Barely.”

Ty Lee giggles. Zuko’s mouth quirks up at the corner.

“I’ll, uh, talk to you later.” He gestures vaguely over his shoulder. “If I don’t let Katara heal my face in the next ten minutes, I think she’s going to hunt me down.”

“It’s not hard to do,” Mai says.

“So I hear.” Zuko looks between the two of them, as if he’s about to say something else, but settles on, “Yeah,” before he walks away.

Ty Lee cartwheels into the room and straight onto the bed. She lands on her back with a deep _Whoof._

“What a day,” she sighs. “I could sleep for a month.”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d be sleeping forever.”

“That’s dark,” Ty Lee says. She props herself up on her elbows and scoots her legs out of the way so Mai can sit on the end of the bed.

“Yeah,” Mai agrees. “Thank you.”

“Most of what you say is pretty depressing, Mai,” she teases.

“I wasn’t thanking you for that.”

“Oh.” Ty Lee pulls her braid over one shoulder and tugs on it. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“Just say _you’re welcome,”_ Mai sighs dramatically. Ty Lee smiles.

“You’re welcome. And thank _you.”_

“For what?”

“For making your own choice.” Ty Lee shifts up to sit next to her on the edge of the bed. She leans her head on Mai’s shoulder. Her soft hair tickles the underside of her jaw. “I know you’ve felt trapped for a long time. I’m happy for you.”

“That’s nothing worth thanking me for,” Mai scoffs. “I put you in a tough spot. Making you choose between me and Azula was stupid.”

“It was brave. And besides, I made_ that _choice weeks ago,” Ty Lee says flippantly.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, when you were covering for Zuko? When you didn’t want Azula to know he was with the Avatar?” She lifts her head from Mai’s shoulder and blinks. “Oh. You didn’t…?”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew. I can always tell when you’re hiding something.”

“Why,” Mai asks with a tint of mockery to cover up her shock, “because of my aura?”

“Because of your face. You wear your feelings all over it,” Ty Lee says with a sympathetic smile. “You’re not a very good liar, Mai.”

That stuns her speechless. This is far and away the first time anyone has ever accused Mai of emoting _too much._ But coming from Ty Lee, who lies so well most people who meet her would assume she isn’t capable of it, she supposes that’s more than fair.

“See?” Ty Lee laughs. “I wish you could see yourself. Your eyes are all like—” She pulls her eyelids apart with her thumbs and forefingers.

“They are not,” Mai denies. Ty Lee leans in closer with her eyes still bugging out like a mongoose lizard, so Mai shuts hers, just to be contrary.

With her eyes closed, the shape of Ty Lee’s laughter bursts in whorls of color in the dark behind her eyelids. She reaches out and plants her palm directly in the middle of her friend’s face. Ty Lee could stop her as easily as anything. Instead, she topples backward, catches Mai’s hand in her own, and doesn’t let it go, doesn’t stop laughing, doesn’t go anywhere.

If she chooses to leave, it will be with Mai. Mai knows this as suddenly and assuredly as she knows where her shuriken will land after she throws it, as Ty Lee knows where on the body to strike.

Badgerfrogs croak in the early evening, and Mai laughs—she actually laughs—to join them.

“Why is it,” Katara says, “that every time you disappear and then show up again, I have to fix another part of you that you managed to break?”

“It’s because he forgets he has a brain,” Sokka answers before Zuko can do it. Suki laughs.

“Hey—_Ughombf._”

“Keep your mouth closed while I’m healing it!” Katara laughs as Zuko sputters out a mouthful of water. She pulls it away to see his split lip mostly back to its normal size.

“You asked me a question,” he objects.

“And you confirmed Sokka’s answer for me,” she replies. “Now do I have to tell you to shut your eye, or can you figure that one out?”

Near the campfire a few feet away, a chuckle rings around the group, led by Aang and dad.

Zuko glares, an embarrassed flush creeping up behind the bruising on his face, and closes his right eye. It’s been swollen into a matching squint with the left all evening. The mottled purple from his brow bone to his cheek bleeds into yellow at the edges. The colors start to fade under the glow of Katara’s water. Not for the first time, Katara wonders if she could find a way to heal the other side, too. Not for the first time, she wonders if he would even want her to.

It’s an easier process than his shoulder, not to mention dad’s broken rib during the invasion. Katara can even let her mind wander as the tiny, broken bubbles of blood in Zuko’s face knit themselves back together.

The temple is fuller than it’s been in a hundred years. Some of that is great—it’s amazing to see Suki again, even if the way she rests her head in Sokka’s lap while he runs fingers over her hair is objectively sweet but makes Katara want to gag because it’s _Sokka._ Dad’s presence is huge and calming like looking out over the ocean at night. Chit Sang is… there.

And then there’s Mai and Ty Lee.

“Hey, Toph,” Katara calls quietly.

“Hm?” Toph doesn’t turn her head, and she certainly doesn’t get up from her comfy spot near the fire. Regardless, Katara knows how closely she’s paying attention.

“How are our guests?”

Zuko tenses. The lines of muscle and blood in his face tighten—she feels another capillary burst. With a twitch of her finger, it rights itself again.

“Fine,” Toph says. “They haven’t left the room.”

“They could be planning something,” Katara says darkly.

“I doubt it,” Zuko chimes in.

“No offense, Zuko,” Katara says as she moves the water down to the red friction burn along his jaw, “but I’ll sleep a lot better knowing Toph is keeping an eye on them.”

“Me too,” says Suki.

“Let me know when you figure out how I should do that,” Toph says drolly.

Zuko laughs at the joke first. Toph doesn’t even scowl at him—Katara thinks that might be what progress looks like.

Katara giggles and shakes her head. Despite the less welcome additions to the group, it’s nice having her family together again. Not just dad and Sokka, but nearly all of them.

Aang comes up behind Katara. He peers over her shoulder.

“Wow!” A small eddy of wind stirs the hair beside Katara’s face. She doesn’t know if it’s his breath or the subtle but joyful movement of air that always seems to dance around him like an excitable polar bearpuppy. “You almost look normal again, Zuko!”

“Thanks,” Zuko says dryly out of the corner of his mouth, clearly twice-shy about the bending water swirling around his chin. Katara laughs.

“I think we’re just about done here.” She pulls the water back into her waterskin. Zuko runs a hand gingerly over his face, fingertips poking into the previously-swollen flesh of his under eye.

“Thank you, Katara,” he says. “I’ll try not to need it again.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” She smiles.

Zuko nods once. He gets up to move closer to the fire. Suki sticks one leg out jokingly, as if to trip him. He jumps over it a foot higher than necessary and sits next to Sokka, whose laughter flies around the chamber and leaps off the walls as easily as Aang might. Aang himself joins the group at Zuko’s other side.

Katara follows him. She settles into the warm space next to dad.

The evening is made up of distant badgerfrogs and cicada moths singing as night steals into the temple. Dad and Sokka regale them all with a joint rendition of their escape, with occasional interjections from Zuko and Suki when one or the other exaggerates for the sake of comedy.

“I almost punched him in the gut,” dad admits with a chuckle.

“You too?” Suki laughs.

“Sorry for being excited to see you both,” Sokka says with his palms out sarcastically. “Next time I’ll announce myself in front of all the Fire Nation prison guards, sound good?”

“Didn’t stop you from yelling _my_ name all over the place,” Zuko teases in his quiet way. Sokka glares, and a laugh makes its rounds again.

Night gives way to sleep, at least for a few of the crowd. Sokka yawns wide enough to fit Momo’s head in his mouth, and Katara notices darkness under Zuko’s newly-healed eye that has nothing to do with the shiner he was sporting this afternoon. Even dad’s shoulders start to droop.

Katara is more than awake—the moon is full tonight. She wanders off to the edge of the courtyard platform as everyone else gets ready for bed. Blue-white light seems to push away the oppressive heat and humidity of the summer air, leaving Katara cold and strong. She likes it best with a chill in the air. It reminds her she’s alive.

_I’ve never felt more alive,_ says the memory of Hama under the last full moon. She feels a jolt in her chest at the thought. She lets it come.

She lets it go.

A heartbeat breaks away from the knot of living bodies in the temple and comes toward her. The water rushing through her loved ones is louder than it’s been in weeks. She feels a fragile sense of control, less afraid of her own power but more aware of the reasons she has to fear it all the same.

She’s doing better. She’s doing _fine._ But she doesn’t know how many more cycles it will take to love the touch of moonlight again.

“Hey,” her dad says.

“Hi.” Katara looks over her shoulder and smiles. She wants to tell him how she feels, but dad wasn’t there for any of it. It would hurt too much to explain. She waits for him to speak instead.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen your brother go to bed this early since he was three,” dad says wryly as a distinctive snore floats toward them. “Mind if I sit?”

“Not at all.” Katara shifts over a bit. He makes quiet, grumbly dad noises as he sits.

They look out over the gorge together. Katara dares a glance and sees the sharp profile of his face washed out in silver. After mom died, dad would sometimes sit and watch the ocean at night. Not even Bato could get him to come inside before the moon set. Katara, determined not to let him lose a single toe to frostbite, started sitting with him on those nights until he gave in and came home.

He’d look after her, even when he wasn’t looking after himself.

He doesn’t look like he did back then. His face would be gaunt and expressionless, his eyebrows always tight. He looks alive again now, though there’s something haunted around his eyes.

Katara recognizes the look. She feels it on her own face most of the time, even if other people can’t see it.

“Do you know why I laughed earlier? When you were scolding Zuko?” dad asks. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. A little smile curls his mouth—he knew she was looking at him.

“Why?” Katara tilts her head.

“You sounded just like your mother.”

Katara presses fingers to the necklace at her throat. It feels good to wear it again after so long in hiding. Her eyes sting. Dad puts a strong arm around her shoulders.

“She would be so proud of you. Both of you,” dad adds. His low voice hums in the humming night. Katara feels his blood like the ocean: huge, alive, and a piece of home.

“Dad,” Katara says. She’s surprised by the taste of her own tears when she opens her mouth. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” The hand on her arm squeezes soothingly.

She pulls back to look him in the eye. He lets her go without hesitation.

“I found the man who killed her. And I—I want to tell you about it. Please.”

“Katara.” The look on his face is too familiar. She hoped she’d never have to see it again.

“Please,” she repeats.

“Of course. Did he hurt you?” Dad’s hands are at her shoulders in an instant, patting them down as if he might feel an echo of the marks on mom’s body, after—

“No. And—” Katara swallows her tears. “I didn’t hurt him. But I wanted to.”

“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” he suggests gently.

She gives him a watery smile.

“It was mostly Zuko’s fault,” she begins, and dad sits with her, and he listens.

* * *

“Psst, hey. Haru.”

“Hm? What’s up, Teo?”

“I’m glad Sokka and Katara have their dad back.”

“Me too.”

“Do you think we’ll see our dads again soon?”

“I don’t know.”

“But we could, right? It’s not impossible.”

“No. No, it’s not impossible.”

“Okay. ‘Night.”

“Goodnight.”

* * *

“Why are you here?”

Ty Lee looks up. The Kyoshi girl is there, her big, pretty blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. Her aura is strong and golden-brown like polished copper. Ty Lee wasn’t expecting anyone else to be up early enough to interrupt her dawn stretches, but she guesses Suki isn’t sleeping so well yet.

“We helped save Sokka and Zuko. And Sokka’s dad! And Chit Sang. And you. Wow,” Ty Lee laughs. “Mai and I sure saved a lot of people. I guess they felt bad leaving us behind after all that.”

Ty Lee gives Suki her most disarming smile. Suki crosses her arms, not buying it.

“I know that. What I don’t know is why.” She takes a step closer, towering over Ty Lee like the intimidating Earth Kingdom warrior she is. Ty Lee isn’t sure if she should laugh or be impressed.

Ty Lee folds her legs behind herself, undoing the complicated contortionist’s exercise, and pops to her feet so fast their noses nearly brush. Suki doesn’t move a muscle. Other people are usually funny about their personal space. Other people are usually easy to throw off balance.

If the way this girl kept up with her on the prison highwire is any indication, balance is something she is very, very good at.

Ty Lee sighs.

“The truth is,” she says, “it was a long time coming. Me and Mai leaving Azula.”

“Why now?”

“Ask Mai,” Ty Lee shrugs. She smiles sadly in a way that she knows shows off her dimples.

“Oh, I plan to.” Suki raises an eyebrow. “But I want to hear what you have to say first.”

“Well, that’s it. I left because I love Mai. She’s my best friend in the world.” Ty Lee is startled by how good it feels. She already knew in her head, of course, but thinking it is one thing. Saying it out loud now that she’s not afraid of taking a lightning bolt to the face for her trouble is something else. “Azula was going to kill her.”

“I thought Mai and the princess were friends.”

“Yeah.” Ty Lee nods seriously. “They were.”

“Hm.” Suki hums, dissatisfied.

Ty Lee thinks for a moment, finger tapping against her chin.

“I know what might convince you!” she says brightly.

“Convince me of what?”

“That I’m not a danger to you or your friends.” Ty Lee jumps in place, excited. It’s been so long since she’s gotten to do this just for fun.

Suki’s mouth twists cynically.

“I’m listening,” she admits.

Ty Lee’s grin stretches her cheeks nearly past her ears.

“I’m going to teach you to chi block!”

Sokka takes a last bite of his apple and tosses the core over the edge of the cliff. The morning air is still cool before the day’s heat and humidity have had a chance to creep in. He’s starting to understand why Zuko wakes up so early, if this is the climate he’s been used to all his life. That doesn’t explain Aang, but the kid is a weirdo in so many other respects that being a morning person barely registers.

“Then you just—The pressure point is right here, usually. Are you sure I can’t—Okay! No problem.”

His brows pinch together at the sound of Ty Lee’s voice. Sokka follows it and nearly throws his boomerang when he finds the source.

“What are you _doing?”_ he shouts.

“Oh, hi!” Ty Lee greets brightly.

“Sokka, it’s okay,” Suki reassures him.

It doesn’t _look_ okay, because Ty Lee has a leg up over her own head and her fingers curled into the precise little fists that have turned his limbs to soggy noodles on more than one occasion, and she’s standing _way_ closer to Suki than she should ever be allowed to.

“In what way is this okay?” His voice doesn’t crack. It doesn’t! He’s just concerned.

“As I was saying,” Ty Lee continues as if Sokka isn’t present, “there’s a pressure point here on the thigh.” She points to her vertical leg.

“Got it.” Suki nods.

“You know,” she drops her foot to the ground and plants her hands on her hips, “it’s going to be hard to teach you if you refuse to practice.”

“How will I know you’re not faking it if I practice on you?” Suki crosses her arms.

Ty Lee purses her lips. She looks to the side thoughtfully—and her gaze lands directly on Sokka. He sees the idea light up in her eyes.

So does Suki.

“No,” she says. She plants herself firmly between Ty Lee and Sokka. Sokka opens his mouth to say something and is briefly distracted by the way Suki’s hair sticks to the back of her neck in the warming air.

“But you know he won’t lie to you,” Ty Lee objects.

“_He’s_ right here,” Sokka says, having found his tongue. Suki looks over her shoulder. Her eyes are big and warm and determined and he forgets where he is again for a second.

“I’m fine, Sokka,” she says gently. “I can handle her myself.”

“I know you can.” Sokka puts a hand on her bicep. He stretches his other arm, rotates his shoulder, and says, “So where are you hitting me first?”

“Huh?” Suki’s eyebrows leap up her forehead. Ty Lee makes a sound of glee.

“Okay, stand over here and put your arms out,” she instructs. “And keep your legs shoulder-width apart. Maybe turn around? Suki, do you want to start with the front or the back?”

“Stop treating him like a practice dummy,” Suki snaps. She stops Sokka from following Ty Lee’s instructions with a firm but gentle grip on his forearm. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” she asks lowly.

Sokka looks between the two of them—Suki, on the one hand, brave and strong and beautiful and with the chance to learn a new way to protect herself and the people she loves. Ty Lee, on the other, deceptively dangerous and ostensibly on their side.

“Yeah, why not,” Sokka says flippantly. “What’s a little chi blocking among friends?”

“Sokka,” Suki repeats. Sokka puts his hand over hers.

“Yes. I’m sure. You want to learn how to do this, right?”

Suki nods.

“Then I want to help you do it.” He smiles. “It’s been a whole couple of days since you beat me up. You can’t tell me you’re not getting antsy.”

Suki laughs under her breath. Her face is warm and close to his. Her eyes are the dark blue of an evening sea. He feels himself tilt closer with the pull of perpendicular gravity—

Ty Lee starts humming.

“Um!” Sokka and Suki leap apart. Sokka rubs the back of his neck and shuffles to the side. “Arms out, legs spread—shoulder-width apart! Got it. Right.”

Ty Lee giggles. Sokka feels a flush creeping up his neck.

What happens next doesn’t exactly fix that.

“Right here,” Ty Lee says from behind him. _Why _did he decide to let them start with the back? “With your knuckles like this.”

She doesn’t touch Sokka. He’s relieved by that. For all he doubts Ty Lee or Mai will try anything, he doesn’t trust either of them. But it does mean that the only person to touch him will be Suki.

Her knuckles collide with the muscle under his shoulder blade. A tingling numbness, like lying on his arm for too long, spreads from the epicenter of the blow. It’s followed by a pinch and another hit. None of them are hard enough to really hurt, but the discomfort is startling despite the fact that he’s felt it a couple times before.

“Good one,” Sokka cheers through gritted teeth as the feeling bleeds out of his right arm. It falls to his side like a dead eel.

“Huh,” Suki says with satisfaction. “What’s next?”

Sokka swallows.

Ty Lee points out precise corners of Sokka’s body and Suki strikes them, one after the other. When she digs her knuckles into the soft space between his ribs, he feels the warmth of her chest close enough to his back that her tunic brushes against him.

_This,_ his brain helpfully points out, _is the first time she’s ever touched you there. And there. And there._

_Shut up, brain,_ Sokka replies.

He loses all sensation in the left side of his torso.

“Let’s try the front now,” Ty Lee says. “Can you turn around without falling over?” she asks him.

“I got it,” Sokka says. He shifts one foot to the side—and immediately starts to topple.

His yelp cuts itself short when Suki’s strong arm wraps around his waist. Her hand steadies his numb shoulder. He wishes he could feel it.

“I got you,” Suki giggles. Her nose wrinkles a little when she laughs. Sokka thinks he’s reaching for her face before he realizes his arms don’t want to listen to him.

“Yeah,” Sokka breathes, lightheaded, as she places him back on his feet. He takes the only option for movement available and shakes his head, willing himself to focus.

_What_ he should focus on is the troubling part, because there’s not much else besides Suki.

“Still good?” Suki checks. Sokka’s heart beats in his throat like it’s trying to fly out of his mouth, and he surprises himself with the realization that he doesn’t actually want her to stop.

“Still good,” he confirms.

She leans in, kisses him gently on the cheek, and digs her knuckles into his hip.

Mai wakes up alone. Ty Lee is one of those disgusting morning people. Mai knows this, but part of her had maintained the shred of optimism required to hope she would open her eyes and find her friend still curled up like a lemur at the foot of the bed.

She sighs. Time to face the firing squad—breakfast.

Half the Avatar’s coterie is still snoozing in their bedrolls around the fire. Hakoda, Chit Sang, and Hakoda’s daughter are slumbering like snail sloths. Ty Lee is absent, as are Suki, Sokka, Zuko, and the Avatar.

Or, to put it bluntly, everyone Mai has ever had a slightly positive interaction with is missing in action this fine morning. She thinks about going back to bed.

The metalbender cocks her head. Mai knows she’s been spotted.

She sighs again.

“Hey.” Mai greets the metalbender casually as she takes a seat at the fire.

“‘Sup,” she replies.

Silence settles over the yard. Mai turns her head away. Beside her, the metalbender does the same. Three boys she’s never seen before in her life appear to be uniting all their combined brainpower and applying it to the monumental task of boiling water.

The pitter-patter of airbender feet comes hurtling around the corner and makes a hummingbeeline for them.

“Morning!” the Avatar greets, chirping like a caffeinated squirrelmunk. “Toph, I wanted to ask you—Uh. Hi, Mai.”

“Hi,” Mai replies, “…Avatar.”

Silence returns with a vengeance.

The Avatar makes a squeaky noise through his nose that sounds suspiciously like someone stifling a laugh.

“My name’s Aang,” he says.

“I knew that.”

Beside her, the metalbender laughs so hard she falls right over.

“I don’t know how much more we can practice on him this morning,” Ty Lee says thoughtfully.

“Are you sure?” Sokka says, voice strained, flat on his back on the ground. “I think I can still feel a little chi in me. Don’t stop on my account.”

“I think we’re done here,” Suki says firmly. Sokka’s face is flushed and strands of his loose hair stick to his forehead. The day is shaping up to be a hot one, but she worries it’s as much discomfort or even pain as it is humidity.

“Okay,” he says on the end of a breath it sounds like he’s been holding for ten minutes. “So how do you give me my limbs back?” he asks Ty Lee.

“Oh.” She purses her lips and looks away. “Well…”

“Ty Lee!”

“It’ll wear off!” she insists with her hands raised in innocence.

“How long?”

“An hour?” She shrugs.

“There’s no way to undo it?” Suki asks skeptically.

“Your sister could probably speed it up,” Ty Lee suggests. “She’s a healer, right? She knows about chi paths.”

“Are you kidding?” Sokka moans miserably. “Katara would turn me inside out if I woke her up this early. I heard her and dad still talking when I got up to use the bathroom, like, two hours before sunrise.”

“I’ll take care of you until you can feel your toes again,” Suki promises. “That doesn’t look very comfortable.” She sits cross-legged beside him and pulls his head into her lap.

“Oh. Thanks, Suki,” Sokka says. The flush in his face practically glows. She pulls a stray hair away from the line of his jaw. If her fingertips linger there a little longer than is strictly necessary, nobody involved is complaining about it.

Sokka meets her eyes. She feels an answering blush on her cheeks. Her fingers stray from his jaw to his temple, then over the ridge of his ear. His eyes slip closed like a contented owlcat.

“Um,” says Ty Lee, “like I said, it’ll wear off. So I’ll just… leave you two alone?”

Suki tears her gaze away from Sokka’s startled face in time to see Ty Lee’s braid disappear behind her around a corner.

Sokka’s goofy laugh pulls an answering one from her mouth, like always.

“Look at you,” Suki says with fond exasperation, “embarrassing me in front of our new friends.”

“Aw, don’t be mad at me,” he replies with wide, faux-pleading eyes. “You wouldn’t kick a guy while he’s down, would you?”

“No, but I might kiss him.” She bends over to press her lips to his forehead.

“No fair! I can’t even kiss you back like this,” he huffs. Suki laughs.

“We’ve waited this long. What’s another hour?”

“Good point.” He makes full use of all his remaining muscles to nestle his head against her lap, closing his eyes again. Suki runs fingers through his hair as he hums a happy little note.

“For the record,” she says, feeling coy and still slightly embarrassed, “you can kiss me any other time. Whenever you want.”

Sokka’s dark lashes flutter once before he opens his eyes.

“But not right now?” he asks.

Suki leans down until their faces are level but opposite, upside down to one another, matched and well-fitted like two independent halves of the same thing.

“Maybe now,” she breathes over his lips. She traverses the last inch between them. Her hair is just long enough to make a curtain that closes between them and the rest of the world.

Mai and Ty Lee provide an audience when Aang finally wears Zuko down, relenting to teach him something beautiful and useless. He opens his cupped palms to reveal a literal fire lily—flame in the shape of a flower, delicate and glowing and alive.

Aang’s hands open around its perfect match. His smile is just as bright as the fire. Ty Lee grins at the sight.

* * *

The next morning, Azula blows up the temple.

* * *

“Take the tunnel and get to the stolen airship!” Sokka says as the roof caves in between everyone else, safe by a relative margin, and Zuko, careening off to throw himself into an ill-advised family visit.

Leaving Mai behind. Again.

Mai isn’t an earthbender who could burst through the pile of unsteady stone. She doesn’t think on her feet as impossibly quickly as seemingly everyone around her. She’s not a hero, really.

But she knows how to survive. And if Ty Lee is going to the airship, Mai is coming too.

Hakoda gets a brief goodbye with his children as the kid with the goofy mustache bends a tunnel with Toph. The fuzzy, slobbery air monster and its preferences split their party almost evenly—at least they get to keep a bender. And they have Ty Lee, who is better than a bender any day.

Their ragtag second-chair team sprints down the tunnel and piles into the airship. A minute after they lift off, a distant sound shudders through the body of the metal balloon.

“What was that?” the boy with the goggles cranes his neck at the window, trying to see above the bridge cabin.

“Probably just some falling debris,” Hakoda replies.

He’s partially right, though they won’t find out for a long, long while that it was, in fact, Zuko using their war balloon as a launching point to fight his sister. Mai will find it very funny. This promise is a cold comfort: there’s not much she finds funny right now.

Fortunately, Mai is good at making her own fun.

The Water Tribe chief is maybe the smartest man Ty Lee has ever met.

To be fair, the bar isn’t high. She grew up with six sisters and went to an all-girls school; she hasn’t gotten to know many men well at all. She used to be friends with Zuko—she likes to think she is again, but you never know with him—and the Avatar has the brightest aura Ty Lee has ever seen, but neither one uses his head the way Hakoda does.

Sokka probably comes the closest. He’s obviously whip-smart, but his father is an older, wiser, more muscley version of him, so. Sorry, Sokka.

Hakoda figured out how to pilot an airship in the span of about fifteen minutes under extreme pressure and with very little room for trial and error due to the whole _breaking out of jail_ thing. After one trip, he flies it like a veteran engineer.

Ty Lee thinks about applauding. She doesn’t want to distract him, though. Both because that would be rude, and because he’s the only thing between all of them and a truly spectacular crash landing.

“So,” Hakoda says with a push of a lever and pull of a pulley, “ladies. Where to next?”

He looks over his shoulder and aims a fatherly smile at Ty Lee and Mai. His aura is strong and blue, pulsing from the center of his forehead.

“You’re asking us?” Ty Lee blinks. Mai doesn’t so much as move from her comfortable corner, staring moodily out the window.

“You’re the Fire Nation experts around here,” Hakoda says. “We _could_ pick a direction and take our chances wherever we end up, but this thing isn’t exactly subtle.” He pats the metal dashboard of the airship like a rider fond of his komodo rhino.

“Sure! I’ve been all over the Fire Nation. Oh, I bet we could hide with my old circus. Nobody would notice a few more people as long as you can blend in.” Ty Lee spreads her hands in a wide, welcoming gesture to the group at large. “Does anybody here know how to juggle?”

“I have a better idea.” Mai strikes a stunning profile against the wide windows. With her arms crossed, her spine straight, her aura fresh and warm like a summer rainstorm, she forms a perfect collection of black and pale lines.

“I’m all ears,” Hakoda says.

Mai turns. Her smile is as sharp and subtle as a knife and her eyes are brighter than Ty Lee has ever seen them.

“Want to know where the other war prisoners are?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're in a position to do so, I encourage you to donate to a local bail fund or organizations supporting protesters and communities impacted by state and police violence. To my understanding, Ao3's Terms of Service discourage linking to even outside organizations in order to solicit donations, but feel free to DM me on Tumblr at [eternalgirlscout](https://eternalgirlscout.tumblr.com) if you're looking for suggestions for where to start.


	9. Something You Give Yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone for your incredible patience. This chapter took longer (and is longer) than I thought, but then again that's true of the entire fic, so I'm probably the only one surprised!
> 
> This is the last full chapter. I'm hoping to post the epilogue in a week or so, which will include some stuff I've been excited about and building towards for most of the story, so stay tuned for that! But the plot itself pretty much ends here. I'm endlessly grateful to everyone who has read, rec'd, commented, and subscribed to this story! It's been a blast to write and an honor to hear feedback.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: canon-typical violence, incarceration, discussions and depictions of war and colonialism, implied minor character death, implied teenagers smooching each other, and minor entomophobia.

It’s Toph who gives Zuko the idea, actually.

Camping in a random, distant corner of the occupied Earth Kingdom with Fire Nation royalty on their trail—Zuko finally feels like one of the team. Although there’s a pretty major difference in the fact that Azula would rather see every last one of them bleed out than turn them in, so the stakes are higher this time. Zuko never wanted the Avatar _dead._

Of course, he conveniently did not think about what his father might intend to do with the last airbender once he had him.

If he’d ever intended for Zuko to succeed. Which he hadn’t, not for one second.

The sting of it has started to lessen. Deep down in dark corners where he refused to let the smallest light burn, he’d known for a long time. If it hadn’t been obvious to Zuko for the first two years and change, it was certainly obvious by last winter.

Who did he think promoted Zhao, his only real rival in the hunt for the Avatar? Who did he think would have approved his arrest after running the blockade? Who did he think set the bounty on his and Uncle’s heads after the North Pole?

Zuko would complain about always being the last to know, had he himself not been the only one keeping him in the dark.

He kicks at the sand. Most of the shoreline here is cliffside, smoothed and sharpened in turn by the gnawing teeth of the ocean. There’s a single stretch of proper beach. He walks along it, tilting his head back with his eyes wide open. The night is clear. A river of stars runs through the zenith of the sky like spilled rice wine.

“Ow!” a voice yelps.

“What the—?” Zuko jumps back after his foot makes contact with something squishy and alive—and irritated, by the sound.

“What are you _doing?”_ Toph sits up and rubs crankily at her side. “You kicked me in the kidney.”

“That’s not where your kidney is,” Zuko replies without thinking. “I mean—Sorry.”

“Yeah, whatever. This is _my_ sand. Get your own.” Toph lies back down and rolls onto her side, facing away from him.

“I don’t… want your sand?” Zuko looks at the tense line of Toph’s shoulders and feels like the world’s biggest dunce. “Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”

The beach is narrow enough that he would have to step over her to get to the other side. He lifts one foot slowly, aware even as he does it that surely there must be a better choice he could be making.

“Are you about to step on me again?” Toph rolls into a sitting position and scowls. “Way to add insult to injury. I can tell how you and your sister are related.”

“I wasn’t—” Zuko sets his foot down. The protest sounds weak even to his own ears. It dies a pitiful death in his throat.

He stands there for what feels like a long time, chewing on his tongue. The urge to shout is an ever-present one, but the response to pain should not be to take whatever hurt him and hurt it _back._ That’s the sort of lesson his father would teach. That’s the sort of lesson Azula would happily learn.

“What are you doing out here?” Toph asks before Zuko can find the words to fix this. The scowl fades from her face.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Zuko says. “What about you?”

“Sand makes things all fuzzy. Makes it harder to feel what’s going on.” She doesn’t elaborate.

“Uh huh.” Zuko waits. And waits.

“I was too close to Sokka and Suki’s tent,” Toph blurts, throwing her hands in the air.

“You mean _tents?”_

“No.” Toph wrinkles her nose.

“Oh. _Oh.”_ Zuko’s face lights itself on fire. He rubs the back of his head. “Yeah, I guess you can, uh, sense…”

“I never thought I’d miss sleeping off the ground,” she grumbles.

Zuko laughs. He looks away, out toward the lap of the tide against the little beach. He squints, then glances in the opposite direction, toward the short cliff between this strip of sand and the field where the rest of the group has their tents.

“Toph—” he begins.

“Listen, Zuko—”

“Huh?” Zuko’s eyes snap back to Toph. She flattens her hand against the sand, makes a fist that turns a patch of it with a foot-long radius into smooth stone, and releases it again. “What were you about to say?”

“You first,” she mumbles.

“No, I—If it’s important, you should—” Zuko growls between his teeth. He’s still so bad at this. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

“Why?” She tilts her head in his direction. Her voice is high and sardonic.

“I owe you that much,” Zuko says.

Toph’s brows draw together, but not like she’s angry. She looks like she’s thinking.

“I shouldn’t have said that about your sister. I know your family is messed up and they’ve hurt you. That doesn’t give me the right to hurt you too.”

“Thanks, Toph.” Her words light up a thin filament of connection in his mind. Zuko’s messed-up family. Beaches. A place to sleep up off the ground. He glances over his shoulder to the southwest.

“So,” she prods, “what were you going to say to me?”

“Oh! Um, just that,” he gestures to the water, “you probably shouldn’t sleep here. The tide could come in any time. I know you can’t swim.”

“Oh.” Toph’s face falls into the blank porcelain mask she wears around strangers. “Sure, Zuko. Thanks.”

He gets the feeling he’s done something wrong. He doesn’t know what.

“You could sleep on Appa,” Zuko suggests. “I don’t think he’d mind.”

“Okay.”

“Um. Goodnight.”

“Night.”

Zuko nods once. Toph sits curled over her knees. Instead of awkwardly creeping past her—or worse yet, trying to step over an upright twelve-year-old—he turns, hooks a hand over the top of the short cliff, and hauls himself over. He falls into a roll on the windswept grass. Ahead of him, tents lie scattered among the rock formations like natural extensions of the landscape.

Zuko looks back. He can’t be sure if that sound is the wind, the ocean, or Toph’s breathing. All have the unstoppable power to shape the earth. All are untouchable to him.

He feels a stinging behind his eyes, a frustration with himself. Aang had the Masters to meet; Katara had her mother to avenge; Sokka had his father to save. Toph just has herself. Zuko doesn’t know how far he’ll need to travel before they can find each other again.

Zuko goes back to his tent. Duke chirps questioningly until he strokes his head, then the bird nestles back down among his nest of Zuko’s shoe. He leaves the flap open just enough to see to the edge of the field and waits up, eyes aching with the strain of watching by moonlight, until Toph comes back from the beach.

She pats cautiously at Appa’s tail and whispers, “I don’t like it either, Fuzzball,” before climbing up and curling into a ball on his soft, white fur.

His own bedroll is nowhere near as soft as bison fur, but it’s a welcome sensation as he falls face-first into it. This time tomorrow, he might have the chance to flop likewise into an actual bed. Imagine.

“You want to hide from the Fire Lord in his own house?” Katara says skeptically.

“Nobody’s gone there since my family was actually happy.”

“Yikes,” Toph mutters.

“It’s the last place anyone would think to look for us,” Zuko continues. “And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I miss sleeping off the ground.”

Toph’s eyebrows crawl up her forehead. That sounds… suspiciously familiar.

“We do deserve a vacation.” Sokka strokes his chin. “Alright. We’ll squat in your dad’s beach house.”

“It’s not a vacation. Aang’s nowhere near mastering firebending.”

“Aw,” Aang groans.

“It would be a vacation for the rest of us,” says Suki.

“Haha.” Toph socks Aang in the shoulder. “Look who has homework!”

“Ow.”

* * *

Theft, Mai realizes quickly, is pretty fun.

Their ragtag team has nothing to their names but the clothes on their backs, Teo’s chair, and Mai’s shuriken. They need money. Conveniently enough, Mai and Ty Lee have sets of skills that lend themselves very well to stealing it.

“I guess Zuko was right,” Mai says to herself as she lets two star-shaped shuriken fly parallel to the window of the fanciest house they could find. Their precise edges slice a wide slit in the screen.

“About what?” Ty Lee asks casually as she climbs up the wall, slips her hand through the opening of the screen, and unlatches the window from the inside.

“He said something to me once about how easy it is to steal stuff.” Mai takes the hand Ty Lee offers down to her. Mai braces her foot against the wall and walks herself up, Ty Lee’s strong arm like a rappelling line.

“Huh. Cool!” Ty Lee smooths down her skirt after they climb in through the now-open window. The room is cool and dark, the wooden floor swept clean and all the candles long since blown out. “Nobody’s home.”

Mai smiles.

“Want to go through the wardrobe and make fun of their taste in clothes?”

“You read my mind.”

They get back just before sunset, skidding down the steep slope toward the glen outside the valley of the village whose richest citizens Mai and Ty Lee just cleaned out. The long gradient of summer dusk colors the air a rich, dark amber.

“Good, girls, you’re back,” Hakoda greets. He’s crouched on the ground beside the ramp into the airship. It looks like he’s drawing in the dirt with a stick.

“Here.” Mai drops a sack of money, which hits the ground with a _clink,_ and Ty Lee drops a sack of clothes, which lands with more of a _thud._ “Who’s going grocery shopping?”

“We’ll figure that out in a minute.” Hakoda beckons them over. Mai steps closer— “Uh-uh! Don’t step on the map.”

“The what?” She looks down. Sprawling across ten square feet around Hakoda is a set of curving lines traced into the ground.

He points emphatically with his piece of a tree branch.

“It’s a map of the Fire Nation.”

“It looks like a platypus-bear with a bucket on its head.”

“You’re right!” Ty Lee says. “Or maybe a komodo rhino, only its tail is a big pineapple.”

“You’re looking at it backwards,” Hakoda insists.

“I don’t know. They’ve got a point.” Teo rolls closer and cocks his head. “What’s that squiggly part over there?”

Hakoda draws a hand down his face slowly.

“That’s the coast of the Earth Kingdom.”

“Where are we?” The Duke asks.

“I think we’re on the platypus-bear’s back foot.” Teo points.

“That’s—” Hakoda stops and blinks down at his map. “That’s actually exactly where we are. Good job, Teo.”

“Thanks, Chief Hakoda.”

“That’s an island? I thought somebody else stepped on your map,” says Ty Lee.

“No, it’s an island. Here’s the lagoon we saw on our way in—”

Wordlessly, Haru spreads his hands, pulls his elbows in, and strikes a fist upward. The curving shapes Hakoda so carefully outlined rise from the flat dirt into short mounds, a three-dimensional model of the Fire Nation.

Ty Lee, Mai, Teo, and The Duke all tilt their heads in unison and let out a chorus of, “Ohh!” in sudden understanding.

“Thank you, Haru,” Hakoda sighs in immense relief. “Chit Sang, could you come out here?” he calls into the airship. The heavy footsteps of their resident felon are audible before he reaches them.

“Can we have dinner first?” The Duke asks.

“This won’t take long,” Hakoda promises. “We need to discuss the plan. The Prison Tower is on the big island at the heart of the Fire Nation.” He points to Capital Island. “Mai was kind enough to tell me exactly where. I’ve plotted out a route that should get us there in about a week. The trouble is what we do once we make it.”

“Get all the prisoners out,” The Duke chimes in.

“There are a couple of problems with that,” Hakoda says regretfully. “Our airship isn’t big enough to carry all the troops. Even if it were, we wouldn’t have time to load everybody onto it without getting cut off, either while we’re on the ground or as soon as we’re airborne. The Fire Nation has airships too. But what we _can_ do,” he looks up from his map and meets each of their eyes individually, “is capture the prison.”

Mai and Ty Lee look at each other, mutual surprise coloring their glances.

“How?” Ty Lee asks.

“The place is built like a fortress,” Hakoda explains. “It’s to keep prisoners in, but once we eject the guards, it will keep them _out._ If we hit it hard, and we hit it fast, the seven of us and our friends can lock it down until the Comet.”

“What about after the Comet?” Teo wonders.

Hakoda looks down at his makeshift map grimly.

“There’s no way the Fire Lord isn't planning something big. Aang will have to take him down before it comes. Otherwise, after it does… Well, it won’t really matter what we do.”

“But we can hold it until then,” Haru says. He exhales a quiet, ironic laugh. “Our own Fire Nation colony.”

“I guess so,” Hakoda chuckles. “Alright, that’s all. Everyone, grab a change of clothes and let’s get some food. No use knocking Fire Nation heads on an empty stomach. Um, no offense.”

Mai shrugs. Chit Sang doesn’t say a word.

“None taken,” Ty Lee says on their behalf.

“We’re really committing treason, huh,” Mai says quietly.

Ty Lee slurps in a last noodle dangling from her mouth. In the time it takes to finish chewing, she scans Mai’s face.

Mai isn’t looking at her. She’s poking her chopsticks around in the dregs of dinner. The dim light from the fire illuminates the edges of her pale face like the sun behind an eclipsing moon. Her mouth curves down at the edges, though Ty Lee can’t be sure if it’s unhappiness or if Mai is thinking really hard.

The two go hand-in-hand a lot, for Mai.

“Well, yeah,” Ty Lee says. She glances over Mai’s shoulder, but Hakoda seems busy adjusting The Duke’s grip on the bo staff he bought in town. It’s two feet longer than The Duke is tall. “If we stick around here.”

“We have a choice?” Mai snorts. “Unless you’d rather go back to Azula.”

“No.” Ty Lee shudders theatrically. The edge of Mai’s mouth twitches upward, caught halfway to a smile.

She sits in silence for a while. Ty Lee toys with her braid, then reaches out and toys with the dangly ends of Mai’s hair. Mai swats her away fondly.

“Do you want to leave?” Ty Lee asks at last. She’ll go if Mai wants to—she’ll go anywhere in the world with her, for her. Wherever Mai feels comfortable. Wherever she feels safe.

“No way.” Mai sets down her bowl decisively and looks at Ty Lee. Her lips curve up again. “This is the most fun I’ve had in months.”

Ty Lee giggles.

“Me too.”

“Girls,” Hakoda interrupts. Ty Lee nearly jumps at his sudden appearance. He’s a sneaky man. “Have you seen Chit Sang?”

The tiny smile drops off Mai’s face. She looks around suspiciously.

“Not since we got back from town,” Ty Lee says.

“Hm,” Hakoda hums unhappily.

“We’ll keep an eye out,” Mai promises.

“Mai’s great at finding people!” Ty Lee adds. Mai gives her a flat look. “What? You are. You found Zuko all those times.”

“I’m sure you made a wonderful bounty hunter,” Hakoda appeases distractedly. He wanders away, stops by Haru to ask the same question, and disappears into the airship, calling Chit Sang’s name.

If he’d been a minute faster, he’d have gotten away with it.

“What are you doing?” the chief’s voice echoes in the metal cabin of the airship. Chit Sang sighs heavily. He pulls the leather strap of his new pack closed and swings it over one shoulder.

“What’s it look like?” He turns and straightens up to his full height. The chief’s sturdy enough, but he’s not a tall man. Chit Sang, on the other hand, has been using his height to communicate more effectively than words since the day he outgrew his dad. The old man had _that_ coming, if nothing else.

“I see.” Hakoda crosses his arms and says nothing. Some embodied spirit of sanctimonious patience, that’s him.

“Now that I’m out, I’m _out.”_

“That’s your choice.” Hakoda doesn’t move. He’s gonna make Chit Sang shove past him and act like it was an attack he can reasonably defend against, is that it? Figures.

Chit Sang doesn’t owe this guy an explanation, but he finds himself giving one anyway.

“You want me to bust _back_ into prison for some earthbenders I’ve never met?” His grip on the pack’s strap tightens. “You couldn’t get two of my people out of lockup, no way am I risking my neck for a hundred of yours.”

“So that’s what this is about,” the chief nods. Chit Sang grits his teeth.

“You don’t know what I left behind there.” That’s all he’s going to say. That’s _all._

“Your girl,” Hakoda says slowly, “and your best buddy. I remember.”

“I bet. Now are you gonna get out of my way or what?”

“No.” Hakoda tilts his chin up. Chit Sang wants to growl like some unbroken circus animal. He’s been trapped enough for a lifetime. Actually being back in the Fire Nation makes his skin itch in a way that means _run, while you can._

“You _said_ I could leave.”

“I said,” Hakoda corrects, “that it’s your choice. You always have a choice, Chit Sang. But so do I, and right now, given that you know what we’re planning to do in a week, letting you walk out of here is looking like a pretty bad one.”

“What are you gonna do?” Chit Sang drops his pack and spreads his arms. “Kill me?”

“I don’t want to,” Hakoda says earnestly.

“I’d like to see you try,” he scoffs. “I haven’t done much firebending since I got locked up, pal, but it’s not a skill you forget.”

“You’d need firebending to take me down?” The chief raises an eyebrow. He looks vaguely amused. “I assumed you’d just crush my head like a watermelon.”

Despite himself, Chit Sang chuckles. Hakoda smiles tightly. He gives Chit Sang an appraising look.

“Stay,” the chief says, then quickly adds, “for now. Until we get to the Capital. You don’t have to help us take the prison, but I’m sure you understand why I don’t like the idea of you wandering off days before we make our move.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to be in on your plan.” Chit Sang raises his palms innocently.

“Yeah,” Hakoda admits, “I could have thought that one through better.”

“Not my problem.”

“How about this? Come eat dinner with the kids and we can fight about it later.”

Chit Sang throws a finger in Hakoda’s face.

“You’re not getting any pity out of me by making me hang around a bunch of ten-year-olds.”

“They’re quite a bit older than ten,” Hakoda says testily, “for the most part. And you’ve seen the girls in a fight. Do you really want to go through all three of us?”

Chit Sang meets the chief’s solid stare. He’s a glacier of a man, this Water Tribe fella, icy and inevitable. Chit Sang knows he’s not melting the guy any time soon. Plus, he’s got a gang of improbably scary teenagers on his side. Hakoda didn’t even mention the earthbender, which makes him reconsider how dangerous the pair of Fire Nation girls must be.

Whatever. They seem like good kids. Chit Sang tuts and shoulders his way past Hakoda.

“There better be noodles left.”

“I got a question,” Chit Sang says.

“I’m all ears,” Hakoda replies.

They sit on the ramp into the airship as the boys settle in for the night. The ship has barracks, technically, though only Mai and Ty Lee seem interested at all in using them.

Hakoda watches with trepidation and amusement as The Duke tries to reach the lowest branch of the tree nearest their campsite. Haru has an eye on The Duke as well, so Hakoda doesn’t feel the need to step in just yet. If the kid wants to sleep in a tree, he has a feeling no power on Earth could stop him.

“You bought that kid a staff,” Chit Sang says eventually.

“And he’s making great use of it.”

They watch as The Duke props his bo staff upright, grabs it in two hands, and starts climbing as gravity tips it toward the tree. He clambers up high enough to hook a hand around the branch as the staff comes in contact with its trunk with a _thwack_.

The staff bounces off the tree and falls toward Teo, who catches it in one hand with a laugh before it can bonk him on the head.

“You gave him a _weapon._ You were showing him how to use it.” Chit Sang shakes his head. “Man, you _have kids._”

“I do,” Hakoda confirms calmly. He can practically feel the wash of heat from Chit Sang’s flaring temper, feeling as if he’s not being heard. “I gave my son his first knife when he was around that age. For hunting, of course, but he was a quick learner. Sokka was so eager, he got going on bone clubs with some of the other warriors behind my back. Mostly taught himself to throw that boomerang, too.”

“Cute,” Chit Sang says, his bite of sarcasm dropping like a hammer.

“Do you know why I let him?” Hakoda turns to Chit Sang for the first time. He doesn’t look back. The light of the fire illuminates Chit Sang’s strong-featured face from below.

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“We’re at war.” Hakoda turns to watch Haru give Teo a hand lifting out of his chair. “We have been his whole life, and mine. A couple years after I gave Sokka that knife, the Fire Navy raided our village and killed his mother.”

For a moment, the hoot of an owl-cat and the dim voices of Teo and Haru are the only sounds in the world.

“Didn’t know that.”

“It was in our house,” Hakoda continues, “practically in front of Katara. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t _let_ my children go to war. They didn’t have that luxury. The war came to them before they ever even met the Avatar.”

Chit Sang curses under his breath.

Hakoda huffs a humorless, near-silent laugh. It still hurts to speak about, even after so many years and in such vague terms. He remembers Katara’s face when she told him about the man—Yon Rha. He admires her strength for doing what she did, and what she didn’t do. Hakoda doesn’t know if he could have done the same.

“I didn’t teach him how to use that thing, by the way.” Hakoda jerks his chin toward the tree where The Duke’s little arm dangles sleepily from the branches. “He already knew his way around a staff. I was just showing him a better way to hold it. I smacked Bato in the face with the butt-end of a spear enough when we were young to know he was going to crack somebody’s skull open sooner or later.” Hakoda chuckles.

“Who’s Bato?” Chit Sang asks. Hakoda stops laughing.

A bright warmth like a hearthfire blooms in his chest, as it always does when he thinks about Bato. And when he thinks about Kya. The former used to lack the chill of grief that comes with the latter. He can’t say that anymore.

“My best friend,” Hakoda says honestly. That is who Bato has always been, before anything else. The words don’t feel big enough, but they’re still true.

“Hmph.” Chit Sang slouches down, elbows braced on his knees. His thumbs press together and slide past each other repeatedly like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“You introduced your, uh, your people, back at the prison,” Hakoda observes.

“Don’t talk about them,” Chit Sang says firmly. “You don’t know us. You don’t know me.”

“Would you let me?”

Chit Sang looks up with a glare.

“No.”

Hakoda shrugs. “Fair enough.”

Chit Sang stares into the fire again. It’s fading to embers, just the smallest line of flame dancing over the edge of a log. He takes a deep breath through his nose, extends a hand, and pulls it back to life. Hakoda feels the sudden renewal of heat.

“I took my shot at walking free, that’s all. If either of them left without _me,_ I’d be happy for them.” Chit Sang speaks slowly as if to no one, just thinking out loud. Hakoda stays silent and lets him keep up the illusion. Whatever Chit Sang needs to let himself talk. “We’re all looking out for ourselves. Doesn’t mean we don’t look out for each other when we can. But I still feel—”

He lets out a long breath from between his parted lips and calls on the fire again, pulling it higher until the last log is entirely wreathed in flame.

Hakoda slumps down too, mirroring Chit Sang’s posture. He lets the fire fill his sight. Haru and Teo, settling down for the night, are shadows in the corner of his vision.

“We were a package deal, you get me? I don’t mean like your kids, or you and your friend. We’re—” Chit Sang drops his hold on the fire. It collapses under its own weight, the last of the fuel long since burned away. “Forget it.”

Ah. So _that’s_ how it is.

“I get you,” Hakoda assures him quietly. These things are hard to say. Chit Sang is already braver than Hakoda in that regard. He breathes in, then says, “I miss Bato, too. Like you miss your buddy.”

“Nah,” Chit Sang dismisses. “Trust me. You’re not like us.”

Hakoda sits up straight and waits in silence until Chit Sang glances at him. When the man’s startlingly light eyes cut to Hakoda, he sends him a secretive smile.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Chit Sang stares in confusion. Understanding blooms in the dim light of the fire’s dying embers. He laughs, loud and sudden as a crack of thunder.

In the morning, Chit Sang lights a fire without being asked. Hakoda wakes up to the sight of him pouring tea.

“What are you doing?” Hakoda asks groggily.

“What? I haven’t had a decent cup of oolong since I got locked up.” He holds out a cup. “Want some?”

Hakoda wordlessly takes the offered tea. He sits up and lets the steam waft over his nose, waking him slowly in the early morning light.

“Don’t think this means I’m part of your liberation gang,” Chit Sang says warningly. “But I’ll stick with you ‘til we make it to the Capital. These kids deserve to have somebody fun around.”

“I’ll give you that one,” Hakoda chuckles. He takes a sip.

He’ll give the Fire Nation this, too: they make a good cup of tea.

* * *

Flame. Nothing. Flame. Nothing. Flame. Nothing.

Azula flicks her first two fingers out. The blue fire burning at the tips of her nails sears a hole in the center of her vision. She stares into it. Looking away would be weakness. She’s strong enough to tolerate her own power. She cannot be hurt by it.

Flame can hurt anyone, except her.

She closes her hand into a fist. The flame disappears. Its opposite image floats in the dark in front of her, yellow as a turtleduckling. She extends her fingers again to burn it away.

Nothing has changed.

She had not seen Mai and Ty Lee for over a year before she recruited them. She had not seen Zuko in far longer. Their presence was a brief improvisation. Their absence is a return to normal.

Nothing. Flame. Nothing. Flame.

The hull of a battleship is only as strong as its weakest point. An engineer would never tolerate rivets that unbolt themselves. A Fire Lord would never tolerate traitors. Azula is as strong as her greatest weakness.

Nothing.

* * *

Ember Island is nothing but warm breezes and sand. And Zuko running Aang through constant firebending drills while sitting at a resting heart rate halfway to a panic attack, but that’s not Toph’s problem.

It shouldn’t be, anyway. But for a guy who apparently has a history of infiltrating high-security locales with uncanny stealth, he’s _loud._ His presence, Toph means. He’s nearly as light on his feet as Aang and he doesn’t tend to yell when he’s not sending his student a bout of high-volume encouragement, but his heartbeat thunders through the earth. The way he holds himself screams _careful,_ screams _control._

Toph understands. She spent a lot of her life quiet and too big for her body, too. And this was his family’s house. It’s his _father’s_.

She thinks she might be the only one who really gets it. Which is too bad for Zuko, since she’s the only one he hasn’t made his apologies to—but she’s also been the clumsiest with him, the least thoughtful with her words or lack thereof.

Like she said, Toph spent a long time being seen and not heard. She doesn’t tolerate biting her tongue anymore. But being a one-girl demolition team in every aspect of her life leaves very little room for _fixing_ stuff after it’s broken.

She thinks about this, all of it, on the day Katara notices the painting.

“Look at little Zuko!” she coos. Aang laughs.

“Look at little _Azula,”_ Sokka adds, caught somewhere between disgust and morbid curiosity.

“That’s the Fire Lord?” Suki asks.

“Yep,” Aang confirms. “He looks just like the portrait I made out of noodles.”

Toph drags the tips of her fingers along the wall and follows the sounds of her friends’ voices. They’re upstairs, too high in the beach house’s wooden structure for her to catch many vibrations.

“How old were you in this painting, Zuko?” Katara asks the question thoughtlessly. Toph may be brash and bold, she may be more than willing to put her fist through anything that gets in her way, but she’s not careless.

Katara can be, sometimes. She cares, but she doesn’t always think about the person she’s caring _for_ before acting on it. Toph stops in the hallway and winces.

“Nine,” comes Zuko’s voice, low and hoarse.

“And that’s your mom?” Suki doesn’t _know._ It’s not her fault. Still, Toph would open up a hole in the earth to disappear into if she could. She’s kind of surprised Zuko doesn’t burn one in the wooden floor for the same purpose.

“Yeah,” he confirms.

“She’s beautiful.”

Maybe Suki knows more than Toph gives her credit for, if the kindness in her voice is any indication. Or maybe Zuko’s famous lack of a pai sho face does it. She doesn’t know what faces he makes, obviously, but Toph isn’t the only one who thinks he’s a bad liar.

For an expert sneaky swordsman and prince who was presumably raised in proper courtly manners, Zuko is remarkably unsubtle.

“Sure.” Zuko’s footsteps fall like a light spring rain. Toph hears him come down the stairs, quick and quiet and thunderous in his unhappiness.

“Did I say something wrong?” Suki murmurs.

Toph follows Zuko’s even footsteps. You could measure a bridge in units of his footsteps, she thinks. An architect would kill for a method that exact.

The moment Toph hits the stone steps in front of the house, she senses Zuko’s heartbeat. He’s ahead of her on the path down to the beach. His pulse makes a racket like he’s being chased by hungry mooselions, but his breathing is as perfectly controlled as can be. If he keeps this up, he’ll make himself pass clean out.

Again.

That’s what Toph tells herself as she stalks him all the way to the shore. It’s for his own good. If she leaves him on his own, who knows what could happen? They have a buddy system on Ember Island for a reason. Even if Toph and Zuko aren’t exactly _buddies_ right now.

He sits down heavily on the sand, more like a controlled fall than a conscious choice. He lets his breathing loose. It comes from deep within him like it does when he trains with Aang. There’s an edge of panic to it, if the nearly pained sounds he makes are any indication.

Toph waits by the cliff separating the beach from the rest of the Fire Lord’s property. She hasn’t made up her mind about whether or not to announce herself yet when Zuko does it for her.

“Sorry you had to see that,” he mumbles.

Toph scoffs. “You’re usually better about your word choice.”

Zuko jumps to his feet. He turns around and rubs the back of his head.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Yep.” Toph pops the end of the word, hard and unhappy.

“I didn’t—I knew somebody followed me. Uh. I guess you _didn’t_ see that.”

“I could feel you breathing.” Toph shrugs. “I can still feel your heartbeat.”

His heart picks up for a second like a poodlemonkey hearing its own name. Zuko shifts on the sand. Hanging out on the beach has helped Toph get better at sand. Now, she thinks of it like a thousand different points of reference rather than a single flat surface. It’s good for precision, better than she would have expected.

“I was breathing fire,” Zuko explains.

“Oh. Cool.”

He huffs, startled.

“It was mostly smoke. I wasn’t concentrating.”

“You say that like it’s not even cooler.”

“It’s clumsy,” he insists suddenly. Toph is minorly taken aback by how emphatic his denial of her compliment is. “My control should be better than that. I’m supposed to be _teaching_ firebending, not messing it up.”

“Okay.” Toph raises her hands. This isn’t the hill to die on.

“Do you,” Zuko asks awkwardly in the sudden silence, “need something?”

“No.” Toph crosses her arms.

“Then, why—”

“Just thought I should look out for you.” She points past Zuko, toward the water. “The tide could come in any time.”

Zuko looks over his shoulder. By the time he turns back around, Toph is already walking away. She’s willing to bet he’s befuddled. The reference might have gone over his head.

Whatever. Toph has more important things to worry about.

She has a pretty good mental map of the house by now. She can tell where people are on the first floor, close as it is to the ground, and the second has railings around its ostentatious landings so she’s not afraid of falling over the edge.

The others must have scattered—probably looking for Zuko for the same reasons she did. She doesn’t hear anybody at the top of the stairs in the entryway.

She keeps a hand on the rail as she mounts the staircase. The earth gets further away with every step. Quieter and quieter. When she reaches the top, she lets go and shuffles across an expanse of floor that might as well be the void of space. It’s not like the ice bridge, Toph reminds herself. There are no monsters to close their jaws around her. There is no water to fall into.

If Toph weren’t an earthbender, this would be no different than anywhere else. Other people do it every day.

Her hands meet the edge of a low table along the wall. Toph exhales.

She reaches out toward the wall, patting around for the corner of a frame or the surface of a canvas. This is about where her friends’ voices came from. Seems like as good a place as any for a big, fancy portrait of the royal family.

“You too, huh?”

Katara’s voice startles Toph. She feels guilty, like a little kid caught breaking the rules—not that her parents would have believed her capable of breaking _anything_ on purpose.

“What?” Toph pulls her hands from the wall.

“We had the same thought about the painting. It’s in the attic.” Katara’s voice is a mix of amused and sad. “Sokka wanted to burn it.”

“If anyone should do the honors, it’s probably Zuko.”

“Yeah,” Katara giggles. Her voice turns somber a second later. “Toph… I know how you feel.”

Toph wants to snark something defensive, but Katara does know. Mostly. Toph can admit that, even if _she_ got a life-changing field trip, unlike some people.

“Katara, leave it,” Toph says quietly. “You don’t have to fix everyone else’s problems, okay? If we’re going to be friends again, we will. It’s just not the right time.”

“But you _want_ to be friends again, right?”

“Sure.” It strikes Toph like a boulder to the head that it’s _true._ She wants to be friends with Zuko again, desperately. She misses him when he’s right in front of her. And she’s not mad anymore—not about that first thing, at least.

She’s pretty miffed about how he won’t say a word to her unless she corners him between a cliff and an ocean, though.

“Then it might help if you talked to each other.” Katara’s hand lands tenderly on Toph’s shoulder. Her long fingers are cool even in the heat and humidity of the day.

Toph blows her bangs out of her face. She _was_ the person who spent a week slamming rock walls in Zuko’s face. Maybe she’s letting her own hurt feelings stop her from thinking clearly.

But Zuko has enough feelings for the two of them all on his own, and he’s having a _lot_ of them on Ember Island. She worries if she adds their tense friendship limbo on top of his frantic lesson planning and the junk he’s going through by being surrounded by reminders of his family every minute of the day, his poor, weird heart might explode from the pressure.

Then again, they’re in the middle of a war. Toph’s patient, as a rule, but some things are now or never. She has a lot to think about.

“Katara,” Toph says.

“Yeah?”

“Can I hold your arm? Just until we get downstairs.”

Without a word, Katara links elbows with Toph.

This time, the walk to the top of the stairs feels as short as it is. It’s strange, it’s stunning, it’s a truth the Toph of six months ago would have laughed in anyone’s face for implying, but accepting help—the help of a person she trusts, who really knows her and cares about the person she actually is—makes Toph braver than she’s ever been.

Maybe Zuko still has to figure that out for himself.

* * *

“Finally,” Mai sighs as the Capital Island comes into view. “We can get off this ugly ship.”

“She didn’t mean it,” Hakoda mutters soothingly to the airship control panel under his hands. He pats one of the levers. Ty Lee laughs.

“The Prison Tower is on the far side.” Mai points to the rolling hills beyond the teeth of the palace city. Hakoda dips them lower and skirts the edge of the island.

The sunset turns rolling fields of grass and scattered trees to a wash of gold. Burning amber light peeks in sudden bursts between the heavy clouds just above the airship. It looks like a rainstorm is fighting a losing battle with the sun. The front windows of the airship turn opaque with slanted light for a moment, dazzling the whole interior of the bridge, before passing behind another cloud.

They make landfall as the sun finally retreats behind the horizon. The sky is blue-grey and enormous overhead.

“Alright,” Hakoda says with the final pull of a lever. The airship groans as it settles in. “Once we get off this ship, there’s a good chance we’re not going to see it again. Take what you need with you. Chit Sang, anything left behind is all yours.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Teo asks. Chit Sang grunts a negative.

“You all have that option,” Hakoda reminds them gently and firmly. “This is going to be dangerous. I won’t ask anything more of you kids than you want to give.”

“I prefer this to getting shot full of lightning,” Mai drawls.

“My dad is inside,” Haru says quietly.

Hakoda kneels in front of The Duke. Big eyes peer up from behind the brim of a helmet.

“You can stay with Chit Sang,” he tells him.

“What?” Chit Sang says.

The Duke and Hakoda ignore him. Hakoda watches the youngest of the group earnestly. The Duke looks away for a second, then meets his eyes.

“Pipsqueak is in there,” he says decisively. “I want to go.”

Hakoda smiles. He nods, pats The Duke on the shoulder, and stands up.

“Look out for each other,” he commands. “We’ve all seen worse than whatever this prison can throw at us. You’re all strong, capable, brave young people, and this wouldn’t be possible without your help. Each and every one of you.”

He looks from The Duke to Teo, Teo to Ty Lee, Ty Lee to Haru, Haru to Mai.

“We’re going to be okay,” he promises.

Chit Sang waves goodbye as the chief and his army of children steal into the emerging night. He watches until he cannot see them anymore, looks down at his pack of stolen clothes and stolen money, and mutters several choice words he didn’t let himself say in front of the kids.

On the other side of metal bars and concrete, the guardian of the Foggy Swamp takes a deep breath.

“If we can take out the guard on the wall, I’ll have enough time to climb up there before the next one comes,” Ty Lee whispers.

“Too bad you can’t chi block him from a distance.” Hakoda peers around the rock hiding their ragtag team. The prison guard on duty is a gangly spot of red and black—close enough to see where all his limbs are, but too far to make out any distinguishing features.

Haru swallows. He thinks it’s probably better that way. Volcanic rock under his fingers turns to sand as he digs a hand into the ground nervously.

“How about it, Mai?” Teo turns to the frowning girl with a smile.

“I could pin him down if I got closer,” Mai shrugs, “but that wouldn’t shut him up. He’d still raise the alarm.”

“Or you could kill him?” The Duke cocks his head. Haru fists a hand around a chunk of rock the size of an eyeball.

Mai’s eyes widen. Ty Lee freezes like a rabbit-deer.

“What?” The Duke tugs his helmet down self-consciously. “Aren’t you an assassin or something?”

“No, I’m not an _assassin,”_ Mai spits. Haru sets his new rock aside and shoves his hand back into the earth.

“Then how’d you get so good at throwing knives?”

“I was bored.”

“Nobody has to kill anyone,” Hakoda interrupts. “Leave Mai alone, alright?”

The Duke pouts.

“How _are_ we going to make it to the wall?” Teo asks. “Man, I wish I had my glider. If I could get up on that cliff above the prison, I could swoop right down and—”

Teo’s voice fades to white noise as Haru tightens his fingers around another rock. He pulls it from the volcanic sand, which turns back to solid stone when his hand emerges. This and the other piece condense to perfect spheres. Haru dances his fingers, and the two orbit above his palm like a pair of miniature moons. He stands.

“Haru, what are you doing? Get down,” Hakoda hisses. Haru pays him no mind. He needs to concentrate if he wants to get this done before the guard on the wall spots the earthbender standing a hundred feet away.

He breathes first and plants his feet. It’s more than muscle memory that extends his arm—it’s the memory of planting his feet beside his father’s with the dawn dew settling upon the grass around them. It’s the memory of watching his dad, solid and eternal as a mountain, raise his arms and bring his elbows in. It’s the memory of copying every movement and earning a smile and a strong hand ruffling his hair with incredible gentleness.

It’s love that locks his elbow, love that twists his wrist, love that fuels the arrow hand form and sends two stone bullets whistling through the air.

Haru is too far away to hear the quick double impact against the guard’s skull—_thud, thud_—but he feels it. He sees the body jerk in shock. He sees it collapse behind the wall.

He looks down at the rest of the group, all crouching save Teo, all staring up at him with blank shock.

“We don’t have much time.” Haru meets Ty Lee’s eyes and jerks his head toward the prison tower. She snaps out of her surprise faster than anyone else.

“On it.” She does a handspring over the rock and dashes up the path to the prison.

“That was some impressive earthbending,” Hakoda says as Haru squats back down. The man is still peeking over the ridge of their stone cover, keeping an eye on Ty Lee as she climbs up the face of the tower like a spidermonkey, but he spares Haru an approving glance and a nod.

“I’ve always been good at the small stuff.” Haru shrugs the praise off uncomfortably. He respects Hakoda, but he’ll feel better about his unrelenting fatherly kindness once it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to replace Haru’s actual dad.

“Ty Lee’s inside,” Mai interrupts. “Let’s go.”

It’s like a game of reverse hide-and-seek. She slips into shadows only to slip back out, striking like a panther-serpent, disappearing again. The chi-blocked guards she leaves behind hiss like leaky steam pipes. They won’t have their voices back until it wears off.

Ty Lee sits braced in the corner of the ceiling. A guard exits a door she thought was storage—a glance inside before it shuts behind her reveals it to be a bathroom—and spies her waiting overhead. Ty Lee waves.

She drops down to the floor. The woman tries to shoot a blast of fire straight into Ty Lee’s face. Time contracts to a series of frames: Ty Lee curls into a ball, somersaults toward her, and stands beneath her extended arm, grabbing the woman by the elbow and aiming her fire harmlessly toward the ceiling.

Ty Lee finds herself face-to-face with the guard. She smiles.

“This is going really well,” Teo says. Which is, of course, the moment the alarm starts ringing.

They’ve barely made it past the shockingly small front entrance to the prison, which was only just wide enough for Teo’s chair. A guard station with a wide glass panel in its door opens. Haru lunges forward and sends the first three armored firebenders toppling into a shallow pit.

Scrabbling hands send shockwaves through the concrete floor. Haru feels where each of them stands, already climbing to their feet. He raises his arm. Stone shackles rise from the floor to pin them down.

Another guard comes out of the station and jumps right over the pit full of her groaning colleagues. She has a hand full of fire already, angry red light shining at the heel of her open palm.

Haru senses the vibrations of an armored body behind him, one hand arcing down in a hard chop toward his back. Just before the blow falls, he hits the guard with a wall of stone and more than likely breaks the man’s nose.

Hakoda scoops up The Duke and deposits him in Teo’s lap as Teo goes careening past and then through a cluster of guards up ahead, knocking the legs out from under several with The Duke’s bo staff and scattering the others. Hakoda throws himself in front of the firebender. She blocks a punch with her free arm and the glow in her hand shoots toward Hakoda like a flaming arrow.

The fire is close enough to singe Hakoda’s beard when it swerves away like a swarm of waspgnats. He turns, and so does Haru, and so does Mai—after she stabs a shuriken through the shoulder pad of a guard to pin him to the floor—to goggle at the tall, broad figure in the doorway.

The figure tosses the stolen fire back at the guard. She catches it, but not the second bout of flame that bursts at her feet, sending her reeling.

“Thought you could use some help,” Chit Sang says.

“You’re back in, huh?” Hakoda grins. Chit Sang grabs another guard by the scruff of the neck, tosses him backwards out the open door, and comes close enough to clap Hakoda on the back.

“Walking free isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” He gives Hakoda a smile of his own. “Now let’s go get your man.”

“Are you sure about this?” Teo checks. He tilts his head backwards to look up at The Duke, clinging to the back of his chair. The flaps of his helmet ripple in the breeze as Teo picks up speed down the sloping hallway.

“It was mine and Pipsqueak’s favorite move,” The Duke says.

“If you say so.” Teo leans forward in his chair. The sound of heavy boots running on concrete gets closer and closer. He gives his wheels another hard push.

The guard appears around the curve of the hallway. Teo throws his brake lever as hard as he can. The chair halts whiplash-quick, spinning sideways with a shuddering screech of wheels against stone. The Duke leaps from his back like an angry flying lemur. He catches the guard around the neck, swings up onto his shoulders, and twists the man’s helmet backwards.

“What—Get it off!” the guard shouts, muffled, as The Duke laughs like a whooping hyena.

“Mai!” Ty Lee drops from the ceiling and throws her arms around her friend in a hug. “It’s so good to see you!”

“You saw me ten minutes ago.” Mai wraps an arm around Ty Lee in return and pats her on the back.

“Anything could have happened.” Ty Lee pulls back with a serious look in her big eyes. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks.” Mai smiles—a tiny, earnest little thing. “You too.”

“I got all the guards on this floor. What are you doing here?”

Mai holds up a pair of thin blades.

“Picking locks.”

Ty Lee looks around at the sturdy iron doors with their little windows. “Are these the war prisoners?”

Mai shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.” She reaches for one of the doors and slips her knives into the keyhole.

Ty Lee tilts her head, confused, until her face lights up.

“You’re giving the guards something else to worry about!”

Mai _smirks._ Ty Lee’s stomach swoops as if she’s swinging upside-down from a trapeze.

The latch gives and Mai pulls the door open.

“What’s going on?” A woman with a long, dirty braid squints against the light. Her voice creaks from disuse. “I heard fighting. Who are you?”

“A couple of liberators,” Mai drawls. Her knives click against the mechanism of the lock on the woman’s caged enclosure.

“You’re busting me out?”

“You and everyone else!” Ty Lee chirps.

“As long as you don’t rat us out to the Fire Lord,” Mai adds.

“The Fire Lord.” The woman makes a face of disgust. She spits into the corner of her cage.

“Gross,” Mai says.

“Be careful of the guards!” Ty Lee steps back as the woman ducks through the open door in her cage.

“Oh, honey,” she says as she stands up to her full height. Ty Lee has to crane her neck back to look at her face. “They should have been careful of me.”

She strides out of the cell. Mai and Ty Lee look at each other.

“I hope all political prisoners are that cool,” Ty Lee says.

Mai is already on her way to the next cell over.

“Let’s find out.”

The communal cells are higher up, the solitaries below.

“Last time I was here, they were still keeping the non-benders together,” Hakoda explains. “My men are this way.”

“What about the earthbenders?” Haru asks.

“They’re in metal cells on the opposite side, I think. Will you be alright on your own?”

“I’ll go with the kid,” Chit Sang offers. Haru nods.

“Fine by me.” Hakoda returns the short bow Haru sends his way before the young man takes off with Chit Sang.

He turns to the upward slope of the hallway. The tower is a spiral of repetition, but this place feels uniquely familiar. He can practically hear the squeal of metal doors, can feel the grip of guards holding him by the arms as he’s marched away from the other warriors.

Hakoda left Bato behind once already. The last time, they parted to save Bato’s life. This time, Hakoda is coming back for him.

He starts walking.

“These are some impressive knots, The Duke,” Teo compliments as they hogmonkey-tie and gag the guard.

“Thanks,” he says. He sticks his tongue out in concentration.

“Where’d you learn to tie knots?” Teo prompts. The Duke usually doesn’t offer much without being asked. The guard grunts in discomfort, so Teo pulls the rope a little tighter.

“By myself when I was little,” he says. “Then I met my old friends. Longshot showed me how to do it the right way.”

“Who’s Longshot?”

The Duke’s little hands fumble with the rope. He blinks his big eyes. A second later, he finishes off a flawless surgeon’s knot.

“A friend of me and Pipsqueak. He left with Jet when the Freedom Fighters ended.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“S’okay.” The Duke tests the tension of his ropework and pats the wriggling guard on the head. “We split up on purpose. Pipsqueak and I know how to take care of each other. Longshot and Smellerbee know how to take care of Jet. It got bad when Jet had too many people to take care of.”

Teo doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I miss them,” The Duke continues after a pause, “but I don’t think I miss everything about being friends with them. Is that bad?”

He looks up at Teo, more worry plain on his face than before any of the dangerous things nobody should have let him do: an invasion and a fall off a ten-foot drop and flying at high speeds into the face of an angry firebender.

“No,” Teo reassures him. “It’s not bad, The Duke. I think it’s really grown-up of you to understand that.”

The Duke smiles. A blast of fire shoots over his head close enough to ruffle his hair.

“Uh oh!” Teo snaps his goggles back into place. The Duke pulls his helmet onto his head. “Incoming.”

“We can take ’em,” The Duke says confidently.

He grabs the back of Teo’s chair and shoves off with his foot, giving them a burst of speed. Teo grabs the bo staff tucked next to his legs and holds it out like a polearm.

Energy ripples through the concrete of the prison, out from Haru and back in, an echo he senses in some bone-deep way beyond hearing. He’s not Toph—he only had a couple weeks to learn from her. But he’s a good listener. He’s precise. He has his basics well-learned.

A solid bulk of nothingness meets him like the shock of cold water. He can smell burning coal and feel the chill of the prison rig’s open yard on his skin.

“These are the metal cells,” he says. Chit Sang stops.

“How do we get them open? Can you make some kind of rock key?”

“Hm.” Haru strokes a finger thoughtfully over his mustache. Maybe he should have asked Toph to start with metalbending after all.

“You know what?” Chit Sang says suddenly. “I got an idea.”

Warden Rangi is having a less than stellar evening.

Her job usually involves putting out fires, metaphorical. Right now it’s fires, literal. One fire specifically—the one being shot at her head by a would-be assassin from the colonies.

Whoever these intruders are, they’re fast. Ten guards went down on the fifth level before anyone raised the alarm. And now they’re releasing random prisoners, setting honorless murderers and all types of scum loose to do whatever they will to Rangi’s prison.

Her record was nearly spotless before this, was _entirely_ spotless before Prince Zuko. At least she’s losing the last of her good name _after_ that stuffy jerk from the Boiling Rock had his smashed over his head. There’s consolation.

Rangi dodges a fire blast from the assassin. Her firebending is rusty but wild. Precision will take her down, Rangi has no doubt. Unfortunately, the assassin is clearly unconcerned with collateral damage in the meantime. One doesn’t restore order by burning rioting prisoners—not, at least, accidentally.

At the apex of her high kick, a broad hand closes around Rangi’s ankle. The banner of flame following her heel vanishes in the air. The assassin pauses and blinks, as surprised as Rangi is.

“‘Scuse me, ma’am,” says a deep voice a head taller than the warden. “I need to borrow this.”

“What for?” the assassin rasps suspiciously.

Rangi twists her neck furiously to get a look at her captor, raising her arms in a firebending form. The meaty fist around her ankle releases, only to fly to her wrist, its twin grasping her other arm below the elbow. Rangi kicks backward, but the man holding her lifts her right off the ground. The assassin looks to be on the verge of laughing in her face. Rangi wants to spit from the indignity.

“One second,” he mutters. He juggles their two pairs of arms around so that Rangi’s wrists are both dangling from one of his hands. With his free hand, he pulls the ring of keys off her belt. “Do you know which of these opens the metal cells?”

“How would I know?” The assassin crosses her arms, looking unimpressed.

“Aw, whatever. The kid and I will figure it out.”

“Put me down—!” Rangi is cut off as the man drops her unceremoniously. She catches herself with only the smallest stumble.

“All yours,” says the man holding her keys. Rangi whirls around to see him fire off a sarcastic salute to the assassin as he sprints toward the higher levels of the prison. Rangi moves to give chase—

“I believe we were in the middle of something,” the assassin’s low, smug voice says. Rangi doesn’t pay much attention to the one-liner, however, because the woman punctuates it by lighting her topknot on fire.

Well. Now it’s personal.

“Hakoda.” Bato stands. He takes a pair of jerky steps toward the bars of the cell, half-convinced he’s dreaming. Behind him, the other warriors murmur in excitement and disbelief. Bato hardly hears them. He only has ears for one voice.

“Hi, Bato.” Hakoda smiles. It’s the same smile he’s had all his life—as a precocious kid, a prankster of a teen, a young man swaggering off the boat after a successful ice-dodging, a warrior, a leader.

“I don’t believe—How are you here?” Bato puts a hand against the narrow bars separating them.

“You thought you could get rid of me that easy?” Hakoda’s hand mirrors his unconsciously. There’s enough room for their knuckles to press together between the metal bars.

Bato chuckles.

“It was worth a shot,” he says.

Hakoda’s eyes turn soft. Bato leans in further until his forehead presses against the cold metal, regretting the fact that he can’t perch his chin on top of Hakoda’s head the way he’s done at every opportunity since the day it became clear he was never going to catch up in the height department.

After a second, someone behind Bato clears his throat. Hakoda blinks.

“I’m, uh.” He coughs gruffly. “I’m here to get you out. All of you,” he addresses the party of warriors occupying the large cell.

A cheer rises from the ranks. Hakoda smiles at the polyphonous sound of all his men chattering at once.

“How do you plan to do that?” Bato asks.

“I—” Hakoda puts his hands on his hips. He fingers the hilt of the short axe hanging from his belt as if considering the possibility of chopping right through the bars. Bato rolls his eyes.

“Oh,” rumbles a deep voice from the next cell over, divided from the Water Tribe warriors by another set of bars, “is it time already?”

Bato and Hakoda turn to see Huu unfolding his legs from the lotus position he’s been in every time Bato has looked at him since they got here. There’s no way he _actually_ hasn’t moved in all that time, but Bato has no eyewitness testimony to prove it.

The waterbender rolls his neck lazily as if waking up from a refreshing nap. He extends his arms, palms flat, and circles his shoulders in a long series of slow motions. Due starts laughing, high and clear like running water.

From nearly-invisible cracks in the old concrete of the prison something creeps. Something grows. Years-worth of mold and moss and springtime seeds tracked in on shoe soles taking tenuous root in the dark, nurtured by Huu’s silent stewardship these last few weeks, burst forth all at once like a dark green flood.

Plants crawl up the bars in an ivy-like spiral. They track across the floor. Warriors stumble out of the way, some reflex in the back of the brain reminded of snakes and danger.

One by one, the moving chain of plant life reaches each lock and then inside like a hundred years of abandonment and natural takeover have passed in a third as many seconds. Down the curving hall, there is a series of decisive _clicks._

Bato pushes open the door to his cell. He snaps the stem of a dandelion curled like a python-panther around the hinge. Across the hall, one of the young women from Kyoshi throws her own cell open like the door itself has personally offended her.

“I’ll admit,” Hakoda says, “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

Tyro lifts his head at the sound of voices, audible even over the constant sound of the alarm. The guards outside the metal box rarely have much to say. That’s one thing to be said about this prison in contrast to the rig: the warden here is much less given to bloviating.

His brow furrows as he catches a few of the words.

“No, it’s not that—”

“Wouldn’t it be the big key?”

“There are a lot of big keys.”

“How many keys does that lady even need?”

“There!”

The click of a lock echoes through the cell block. Across from Tyro, the Boulder looks up, theatrical confusion twisting his expressive eyebrows. Two figures stand silhouetted in the doorway. They lack the outline of the guards’ usual uniforms.

Several earthbenders, Tyro included, stand warily. The slighter figure steps into the cell. His bare feet pad across the metal floor straight toward Tyro.

Tyro catches sight of the edge of the figure’s jaw in the light from the door. His eyes adjust slowly, but he knows his son in the beat of his heart regardless.

“Hi, dad,” Haru says softly.

Tyro reaches out a hand and cups his face. With the other palm, he smooths down Haru’s long hair. Haru collapses into his chest without hesitation. Tyro wraps his arms around his son and it seems to break the spell over the other earthbenders, who whoop and cheer and gather around with a thousand questions, slapping Haru on the back and ruffling his hair out of its topknot.

“How are you here?” Tyro asks—the same question he asked months ago, on the prison rig, when he saw his son standing in the one place in the world he never hoped to be when they met again. This time, it’s joy and confusion instead of grief. The taste is sweeter, even if the circumstances are not far removed.

“We’ll have time for that soon.” Haru pulls back with a smile stretching his face as wide as a fault line. “First, I need your help.”

“The Boulder offers any assistance you can name, my mustached friend,” says the Boulder.

“Thanks, The Boulder,” Haru nods. The Boulder cocks his head, clearly surprised and befuddled by the article.

“Uh, fellas, wanna get a move on?” the other figure in the doorway suggests. “There are some guards coming who could use a rock to the head.”

Teo’s chair rolls to a stop. His hands fall to his sides as he meets the last non-earthbenders trickling out of their cells. The warriors and waterbenders are long gone to help lock down the prison, but a couple of people linger behind.

“Pipsqueak!” The Duke shouts. He leaps off the back of Teo’s chair and hurtles into Pipsqueak’s arms like a cannonball with arms and legs. Pipsqueak’s deep laughter echoes off the sides of the concrete hallway.

Their reunion startles another man—a thinner one, hair perpetually pointing toward the sky like he’s just walked in from a hurricane. He turns. Teo is already rolling toward him.

“Teo.” The Mechanist’s voice breaks halfway through his son’s short name. He rushes forward and leans down to press his face into Teo’s hair.

“It’s good to see you, dad.” Teo pulls his goggles up to his forehead before they steam up with the condensation of tears. He wraps his arms around his dad’s middle.

Hakoda will need their help soon. At the very least, he’ll need to know where they left the guards who are tied up and stuffed into storage closets on the next floor. But Teo thinks that can wait a minute. Just one. They’ve earned it.

“Alright.” Hakoda opens the front door a crack, peers out, and waves the next Fire Nation prisoner forward. Chit Sang hands the prisoner a trussed-up guard on their way out like a parting gift.

“It’s strange that they haven’t sent back-up yet,” Tyro notes. “I’d expected to see a squadron of firebenders making their way to the prison by now.”

“I have earthbenders keeping watch on the balcony. It wouldn’t be tactical for them to approach from the front,” Hakoda says.

A silent beat passes.

“What if they _don’t_ come from the front?” asks Haru.

Hakoda turns around. “What do you mean?”

Haru frowns thoughtfully. He presses his palms together, closes one eye, and stomps a foot. His eyes snap open.

“This way,” he says, taking off down the hall. Hakoda and Tyro look at each other.

“Can you take over?” Hakoda asks a nearby pair of Kyoshi warriors. Yes, that’s definitely what they’re called. He’s got it this time.

They nod and take up position at either side of the door. Hakoda follows Tyro, the two of them hurrying to catch up to Haru’s frantic pace down toward the prison’s basement.

The sloping hallways come to an end when they pass below the surface of the ground. There is no natural light down here, though sconces are still burning. Haru slams one foot into the floor again and turns sharply toward a door. He wrenches it open, takes a dimly-lit set of stairs into an even darker chamber, and meets the mouth of a tunnel, which vanishes into what Hakoda is pretty sure, if his sense of direction can be trusted, is the cliff behind the prison.

Back toward the palace city.

“Impressive,” Hakoda says.

“He didn’t learn that from me,” Tyro comments proudly. Haru smiles. The father and son take a simultaneous, rigid step forward, lift their fists, and pull a wall of stone over the opening in the wall. It closes with a rumble.

“Now nobody can get in,” Haru says.

“Or out,” Hakoda adds. “We’re in this for the long haul.”

Tyro pats him on the shoulder.

“We’ll get by.”

* * *

“Somehow I thought when we broke out of prison the last time, it meant we _wouldn’t_ have to sit underground and eat jail food for the rest of our lives,” Mai says. She picks up a spoonful of her jook and lets it dribble back into the bowl.

“Mai,” Ty Lee reminds her, “coming here was your idea.”

Mai sighs. “From now on, no one is allowed to listen to me. Ever.”

“I reckon she’s got a point, don’t you, Due? About the food?” Tho, straddling the bench on the opposite side of the table, inclines his head toward Mai.

“I reckon she does,” Due agrees. “You think it’s time to tell Tyro our plan?”

“It may be.”

“Plan?” Ty Lee perks up. Beside her, Mai raises a skeptical eyebrow. “How are you planning to get us better food?”

“The plan, miss, is to think outside the box. Y’see?” Tho taps his nose conspiratorially.

“I… don’t.”

“You will,” Due assures her. In unison, the swampbenders rise from the mess hall table and make their way to the station at the head of the room, where Tyro stands at the vat of rice porridge making sure everyone gets what they need.

“Tyro, I heard through the vine there’s some problems with the food,” Tho says, not unkindly.

“Oh? Has anyone been unable to eat?” He stirs the massive ladle and gives the scoop a judgemental sniff.

“Not as such,” Tho assures him.

“But we think the menu might be missing a little something,” Due says.

“One thing that’s mighty important to a healthy diet is variety.” Tho cuts the last word into four long syllables: _veer-eye-ah-tea._

“I agree,” Tyro says. “But the emergency rations the guards left behind were concerned more with survival than flavor, I’m afraid.”

“That’s where we come in,” Due says. His face splits into a grin. “You think those rations are the only food ‘round here?”

Tyro raises a heavy white eyebrow.

“I was under that impression,” he admits.

“What are you two looking at?” Hakoda appears across the table from Ty Lee. He glances over his shoulder, following their gazes. “Enjoying the show?”

“Immensely,” Mai says.

“Shh.” Ty Lee waves a hand at Mai.

“Nowhere close.” Tho shakes his head. “Why, you’re letting a future snack crawl away right now, if you’d take a gander there by your feet.”

Tyro looks down. Ty Lee pushes herself up, leaning on her hands against the table to try and see what they’re all looking at.

“Here.” Due folds his long legs into an ergonomic squat, grabs something off the ground, and pops back up. “That’s good eating.”

“That,” Tyro says, “is a cockroach.”

“Naw,” Due laughs, “it’s a june bug! Real tasty. Roast a bunch of ‘em over hot coals, and you’ve got yourself something to munch on while fishing.”

“There’s a lot of down time on boats,” Tho says to Tyro’s baffled expression. Ty Lee has the feeling that wasn’t the part that confused him.

Hakoda coughs conspicuously several times in quick succession. He’s not very subtle about covering up his laughter. Ty Lee glances over at Mai, whose face is tinged a pretty shade of seafoam green.

“What’s going on?” Huu wanders leisurely toward his kinsmen and Tyro.

“I am not putting insects in everyone’s dinner until we have no other choice,” Tyro says firmly. “We’re not starving yet.”

“Ah,” says Huu. “Hmm.”

“What was it you were saying,” Ty Lee murmurs to Mai, “about how no one should listen to you?”

“Shut up,” Mai mutters back queasily.

“If you’re not going to finish that, can I have your jook?”

Mai shoves her bowl sideways. Ty Lee digs her spoon in.

“How are you doing?” Hakoda asks. “Bugs aside.”

“Fine,” Mai says. She sounds a little bit like she’s about to lose what jook she managed to eat.

“This reminds me of the circus,” Ty Lee offers.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Hakoda asks.

“It’s good,” she says. “Mostly.”

“Oh?”

“I love meeting all different kinds of people. I love learning. I love seeing new places, and I’ve definitely never been to prison before!” She smiles. Hakoda doesn’t. He looks at her a little sadly.

“I imagine you’re not a fan of being cooped up like this,” he says.

Ty Lee looks down into her—Mai’s—bowl of jook.

“Not really.”

“You’re free to leave, you know,” Hakoda says gently.

“Yeah, right,” Mai scoffs, probably still cranky from the bug talk. “You trust us not to run straight to the Fire Lord and tattle on everyone here? You hardly know us.”

“I do,” he says. “Trust you.”

“Why?”

Hakoda raises an eyebrow. He glances at Ty Lee.

“She has a point,” Ty Lee shrugs. “You sent all the Fire Nation prisoners away except for Chit Sang. Why _do_ you trust us so much?”

Hakoda looks at them both for a long moment.

“What do you know about the Water Tribes?” he asks.

“There are two of them?” Mai guesses indifferently. Hakoda chuckles.

“Not quite.” He tilts his chin toward Due, Tho, and Huu, the latter of whom seems to be playing peacemaker between the other two and Tyro. “But close. If you don’t count our friends from the swamp, there are two main Water Tribes, one in the north and one in the south. All my men and I are from the South Pole.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mai drawls. Ty Lee elbows her and sends a warning glance: _be polite._ She sighs. “Sorry. Please, go on.”

Hakoda laughs quietly again.

_“I’m_ from the South Pole, but my mother wasn’t originally. She was born in the Northern Water Tribe. She grew up there. She was almost married there.”

Torches cast dancing light and shadow across Hakoda’s face. His eyes are distant. They land on the tabletop and seem to look straight through it. Ty Lee gets the feeling there is a lot more to this story than he wants to tell them.

“What happened?” she asks.

“She left.” Hakoda looks up from the table and smiles. “She left her people, her home, and her entire family because she didn’t like the way they ran things. She got as far away as she could—literally. All the way to the other side of the world. She loved them, and I think some part of her always wanted to go back, but she never regretted it.”

He leans forward on his elbows. Ty Lee’s breath catches in her throat. Beside her, she can feel Mai stiffen as if she wants to mirror Hakoda’s movement but is holding herself back.

“That’s why I chose to trust you,” Hakoda says. “And part of why I trust Zuko. Sometimes, you see what your people are doing and you know it’s wrong. You refused to be a part of it anymore. It’s incredibly brave.”

Ty Lee doesn’t know what to say. She’s not used to talking about things that really _matter,_ and certainly not when they have to do with herself_._ It’s dangerous, like a balancing act. No net, alone on the highwire, one wrong move and suddenly you’re not up so high anymore or ever again.

Mai speaks first.

“Thank you.”

To-the-point. Hakoda seems to understand it. He smiles one more time, his aura flaring like a flash of sunlight off the ocean, and pushes himself to his feet with a fatherly groan.

“I think it’s my turn to take a watch shift,” he says. “You girls have a good night.”

“Thanks,” Ty Lee replies reflexively. “You too.”

Without Hakoda there, Ty Lee’s eyes land on the scene at the head of the hall. Tyro has his arms crossed and a considerate look on his face.

“Every place is an ecosystem,” Huu explains. “You think an insect is any dirtier than the other animals we hunt, once it’s washed and cooked? Pull a fish out of a river and it’s covered in mud. Possum-chicken ain’t exactly fragrant with the fur still on.”

Due and Tho nod along.

“It’s a matter of perspective,” Tho says, _pur-speck-teeve._

“And some of the critters in this jail get mighty big,” Due adds.

“Good source of protein,” says Tho.

“And vitamins,” Huu rumbles.

“Just think about it,” Tho concludes.

“I see.” Tyro nods slowly. “If we need more… vitamins, I’ll consider it.”

“Good man,” cheers Due.

“If he starts putting bugs in the rice,” Ty Lee vows solemnly to Mai, “I’ll pick yours out. Okay?”

Mai sends her a wobbly smile.

“You’d better.”

* * *

“What should we do to them, father?” Azula asks, vicious and furious and gleeful. She knows Mai and Ty Lee had a hand in this. She can _smell_ it, like a predator scenting a rival in her territory. Like a predator and her prey. She bares her teeth.

“Nothing,” the Fire Lord says placidly.

“What?” Azula feels as off-balance as she did when she nearly fell—No. None of that. “But—They invaded us _again._ We should raze that prison to the ground!”

“Azula,” he says warningly.

Azula bites her tongue so hard it nearly bleeds. She quickly and consciously eases the tension in her jaw. Someone will notice if she damages it. Something terrible will happen if she loses one of her more important weapons. A weakness. Something she cannot afford.

“Well.” Azula tosses her hair. The flames between herself and her father stay an even, perfect curtain, so well-controlled they hardly flicker. She ought to be able to emulate that control by now. She’s better than this. “You’re right, of course. Sooner or later, they have to come out.”

“Precisely. And in the meantime, I have more important matters to deal with. You’re dismissed.”

“I—I thought we were going to make plans for the Comet today—”

_“Dismissed,”_ he repeats, a dangerous hiss she has often heard but so rarely felt aimed at herself.

Azula bows and leaves the throne room. Each footstep rings off the marble floor like a firework at the moment of ignition. She imagines they are the sounds of detonation as the prison’s walls fall in a burst of fury and flame.

It’s no comfort. None at all.

* * *

“I don’t think they want to be friends with you.” Mai slurps her soup out of a shallow bowl, loud and long like the act itself will magically irritate her mother from across an ocean.

“They just don’t know me yet!” Ty Lee says cheerfully. The Kyoshi warriors at their table across the mess hall take turns glaring in Mai and Ty Lee’s direction like a school of koi frogs popping to the surface one by one.

“They know you beat them up and put them all in jail,” Mai comments dryly. “At least introductions are out of the way.”

“You did that too,” Ty Lee points out.

“Yeah, but I’m not trying to be friends with them.”

Ty Lee turns over her shoulder and watches the group of girls thoughtfully.

“It worked with Suki,” she says quietly.

“No way.” Mai sets her bowl down. “You’re going to teach all of them too?”

“Why not?” Ty Lee grins so brightly it makes the underground mess hall feel as if it’s flooded with sunlight. “I bet they’re great students.”

“Good luck,” Mai shrugs. Ty Lee nods once. She hops up from her seat, long braid swishing behind her, and saunters up to the girls.

Mai watches in fascination. Ty Lee is _likable._ She’s not an honest person, but her enjoyment of other people, even people she doesn’t know or trust, is genuine. Mai doesn’t know how she does it.

Before her soup is even gone, Mai hears a cheerful “Great!” and watches Ty Lee come back.

“Well?”

“We start tomorrow morning.” Ty Lee smiles. “It’s nice, making new friends.”

Mai watches the lesson for a while the next morning. She and Ty Lee have been attached at the hip by default since they got here, but Mai quickly feels out of place.

The Kyoshi warriors are trained for up close and personal combat, like Ty Lee. They move with the grace of training and invention, split-second redirections of energy, complete awareness of their bodies and the space around them. Ty Lee had gotten Suki to warm up to her quickly, all things considered, but in the whole group she comes alive and almost seems to become one of them when they move in sync.

It makes Mai feel… weird. A little bit like when Azula would rope Ty Lee into some prank against her when they were kids, but nobody is mocking her here. Nobody is even paying attention to her. Normally, that’s what Mai _likes._

Maybe she ate some bad porridge. Tyro said the rations could last them nearly a month, but with these bugs everywhere, who knows what’s gotten into the rice.

Mai slips out around midmorning. None of the girls comment on it when she leaves.

She takes a walk around the prison for want of anything to do. Who knew liberating political prisoners would be so monotonous after the initial takeover? She was hoping to fight off assassins every day or something. Now she’s just cooped up inside, like always.

Soon, the identical walls and the circular layout of the prison lead Mai to lose track of where she is. It doesn’t really matter—she hasn’t encountered any corners, so as soon as she’s had enough of walking in this direction she’ll just turn around. But the minor stress of being technically lost means she’s startled so badly she leaps five feet backwards and has a knife in her hand before she can blink when half the ceiling comes crashing down.

Concrete slams against concrete in an explosion of rock dust that coats every inch of Mai in a fine grey powder. She spits out of a mouthful of it, disgusted.

“Sorry!” Teo appears through the fog. He pulls his goggles up his head, leaving two round patches of clear skin around his eyes contrasted with the thin coating of concrete dust over the rest of his face.

“Did I forget to block off this hallway?” the Mechanist coughs, emerging next to his son. “Oh, dear. Somebody could get hurt.”

“I’ll take care of it, dad.” Teo swings his chair around to head down the hallway. He pauses and looks over his shoulder at Mai. “You okay?”

“I’m covered head to toe in prison dirt. My favorite thing.” Mai shakes her sleeves once for emphasis. Two clouds of dust billow out on either side.

Teo laughs.

“Mine too.” He rolls off, presumably to ward any other unfortunate souls away from sharing Mai’s fate.

“If it makes you feel better, once we’re done here you won’t have to worry about dirt again!” the Mechanist grins.

“What.”

“We’re turning this cell block into a bathing area. I’m certain I can get running water through here if I reroute the pipes from the laundry room.” He traces one extended wooden finger along the busted up ceiling.

“You can do that?” Mai blurts.

“Oh, certainly. Unless the fine folks in the Caldera think to shut off our water supply, but I’m willing to bet it’s too tangled up with other parts of the island or they would have already done it. Besides,” the Mechanist shrugs, “people are starting to stink. I’ve dealt with that problem before, believe me, and I’m in no hurry to do it again.”

“I want to take a bath more than anything in the world,” Mai assures him. “I didn’t know you knew how.”

The Mechanist tilts his head quizzically. His patchy eyebrows rise up his forehead.

“Knew how to do what? Bathe?”

“Get running water.” Mai chews on her tongue, feeling stupid all of a sudden. “In the Earth Kingdom. I thought you all carried buckets from the river, or whatever.”

The Mechanist blinks his big, owl-like eyes. He throws his head back and veritably hoots with laughter.

“Oh, that’s what you thought, hm?” He runs a hand through one tuft of his hair, which springs back upright immediately. “The Fire Nation outsources more than just its manufacturing, you know. Much of the technology you enjoy in your daily life was pioneered in the Earth Kingdom, if it wasn’t outright stolen. Not to toot my own horn, but a significant amount came from the brain of yours truly.”

He bonks the side of his own head with his wooden knuckles.

“Like what?”

“You know that airship the seven of you came flying in on?” His smile makes him look slightly unhinged, but Mai is pretty sure that’s just his face.

“War balloons? Those were yours?”

“Well, I can’t take all the credit. Sokka came up with the final piece we needed to make them usable. He’s a creative boy. You know Sokka?”

“I know Sokka,” Mai confirms flatly.

“It’s so nice to hear that Teo’s friends get along,” the Mechanist sighs happily.

“Sure.” Mai shakes her sleeves out one more time and starts to walk away. She pauses, sighs, and thinks, _You can only get so dusty._ “Do you want help?”

“Hm? What was that?”

Mai turns around.

“With all this.” She gestures at the half-demolished hallway. “Looks like you could use an extra pair of hands.”

“Oh! Actually, yes. It’s hard to lift the tubes by myself, they’re not too heavy but a little unwieldy. But, are you sure?” He adjusts the monocle over one eye. It flashes in the dusty air.

Mai shrugs. “It’s something to do.”

The Mechanist grins.

“Boredom is the mother of invention,” he says. “Let me find you a hard hat, and we’ll get started.”

Mai learns a lot about plumbing in a short span of time. The Mechanist is happy to explain, and Teo is happy to demonstrate.

It occurs to her, as she wipes a streak of sweat and dust from her forehead, that there might be more to entertain her in this prison after all.

* * *

_The Boy in the Iceberg_

Act III Scene VI

_[Set: Throne Room]_

FIRE LORD OZAI: Now that I have defeated the pathetic invasion, I can finally turn my attention to more important matters. Prince Zuko, my loyal son, you have finally redeemed yourself after your years in exile. What do you think of all I have accomplished without you?

_[Enter PRINCE ZUKO]_

PRINCE ZUKO: The greatness of the Fire Nation knows no bounds, father. I have never been so honored.

FIRE LORD OZAI: Indeed. You must know well how glorious our homeland is after living in the squalor of the Earth Kingdom.

PRINCE ZUKO: The people of the Earth Kingdom have no honor.

FIRE LORD OZAI: This is true.

PRINCE ZUKO: And I have learned well from them! _[He draws his swords]_

FIRE LORD OZAI: Where did you get those?

PRINCE ZUKO: Wouldn’t you like to know! _[He attacks]_ I will have the throne! I will take it with these blades!

FIRE LORD OZAI: _[He dodges the swords]_ You won’t even challenge me to a proper duel? Treachery! You are no son of mine!

PRINCE ZUKO: But soon I will be Fire Lord! Take that! And that! _[He chops at FIRE LORD OZAI with the swords]_

FIRE LORD OZAI: _[He continues to dodge the swords. PRINCE ZUKO has very little skill]_ Enough! I will not sully my firebending by using it against someone with no honor. Guards!

_[Enter GUARDS. They surround PRINCE ZUKO and point their weapons at him]_

PRINCE ZUKO: No! How could this happen? My plan was so carefully considered and not foolish or impulsive at all!

FIRE LORD OZAI: Take him to the Prison Tower!

_[Exit GUARDS with PRINCE ZUKO]_

_Director’s note: extravagant scene change follows, making use of wild applause_

* * *

“So.” Bato leans against the wall, careful to stay a solid few feet away as if approaching a skittish polar leopard. “Hakoda says you know your way around a few weapons.”

“Shuriken, yeah,” Mai confirms, the picture of teenage boredom.

“You just throw them, though?”

“That’s what you do with shuriken.”

Bato bites back a chuckle at her flat, derisive tone. It’s been a while since he was fifteen, but he recalls the inescapable feeling that every adult in the world was insurmountably dense.

“I noticed your friend is leading a bit of a workshop for the Kyoshi warriors,” he says. “Have you ever thought about doing the same?”

Mai looks at him. Her stare is sharp and a little cold, but Bato thinks the prickliness has more to do with discomfort than malice. Bato has met a lot of teenagers with good reasons to be suspicious of the adults around them since getting roped into all this Avatar business. He’s learned that a good way to help with the discomfort is to show respect for their interests.

“For who?”

“Some of our younger warriors,” Bato suggests. “I don’t have much experience with anything but a spear or a club. Water Tribe combat tends to be up close and personal—we used to have waterbenders for the longer distance stuff, a long time ago. It’s been hard to fill in those traditional gaps.”

Mai turns away. She stares straight ahead, and if Bato weren’t an irritating optimist, he’d think she was shrugging him off entirely.

“Everyone’s sharing their skills for the good of the group,” he adds. “And you’re not the only one who’s bored around here.”

Mai sighs. She drums her fingers against the bicep of one crossed arm.

“Ask me again tomorrow,” she says.

“Why? What’s tomorrow?”

“That’s when Teo thinks we’ll be done with the plumbing.”

As if summoned, Teo appears around the corner. Mai waves at him, nods her goodbye to Bato, and follows in the direction of the under-construction bath house.

Bato laughs. _Hakoda will be happy to hear,_ he thinks, _the kids are alright._

“The Boulder appreciates your hard work with the plumbing, young Fire Nation girl!”

“I have a name. It’s Mai.”

“Have you considered thinking of a _cooler_ name? Like a stage name, but for your everyday life. _The Boulder_ works great for me. It’s a versatile title, whether I’m putting the hurt in the dirt or picking up a takeout order. People hear _the Boulder_ and they think, hey, there’s the Boulder!”

“Like what?”

“What are your hobbies? The Boulder loves earthbending huge rocks, which is how he came up with _the Boulder._”

“I don’t know. Knives?”

“_Knives_ is an interesting name. Very evocative.”

“No, my hobby is—Never mind.”

“Good work, Knives. Now you just need a gimmick.”

“…knives?”

“Excellent!”

“Mai,” Tyro leans over the sill of the window into the kitchen and waves her over as she passes through the dining hall. “Do you have a moment?”

“I’m on dish duty.” She doesn’t try to disguise her pure revulsion at the concept, but she’s finally doing it without explicit complaint. Tyro is proud.

“Tell you what.” He smiles. “I’ll relieve you of your duty if you help me with dinner.”

“Anything,” she breathes on a sigh of relief that could turn a hurricane backwards.

“Would you taste this for me?” Tyro stirs his vat of soup and holds out the ladle. “I’m not as familiar with these Fire Nation spices as I’d like.”

Mai tucks her long trails of hair back, leans in daintily, and slurps from the ladle in defiance of all manners. She presses her lips together thoughtfully.

“Could be spicier,” she says.

“Ah.” Tyro’s tongue stings with the mere thought of what Mai might actually consider _spicy._ “That’s not quite what I was looking for. Anything more specific?”

“What, are you a chef?”

Tyro chuckles.

“Not by trade, but I know my way around a kitchen. Or, I thought I did. This one is a little more complicated than I’m used to. I’m grateful I don’t have to fill this vat from a well, though. Saves a lot of time.” He taps the side of the massive cooking pot. It gives a deep, metallic ring in response.

“You don’t—” Mai looks to the side as if choosing her words carefully. “The Mechanist said people in the Earth Kingdom had running water, too. That the Fire Nation stole a lot of our technology from you.”

Tyro hums as he sprinkles a bit more of the reddish shaved spice into the vat. He stirs, considering.

“The Mechanist is a good man, and a brilliant inventor,” he says, “but he forgets that not everyone shares his view of things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haru and I are from a small village. A mining town. In more peaceful times, I’d say we were happy to live simply and honestly.” He watches the beginnings of a boil send bubbles to the surface of the vat. “But that’s not the world we live in. We’ve been under Fire Nation occupation for a long time, Mai. When you live in fear that you won’t be able to feed your family because of soldiers burning down your livelihood, or of your son being taken away for the crime of being born an earthbender, things like the inconvenience of using a well pump instead of a faucet aren’t your top priority, even if you could do something about it.”

He looks up at Mai. Her eyes are dark and wide under tight brows. He knows that these are things she’s never had to think about, and he desperately wishes that all children could be so lucky.

“Progress is all well and good,” Tyro pauses, watching as the spices vanish into the swirling amber of the soup and diffuse throughout, “but technology isn’t the only thing, nor the most important thing, that the Fire Nation has stolen. Do you understand?”

When Tyro looks at her again, Mai’s mouth is a tight line. Her eyes shine brighter than the light of the wall lamps would account for. She meets Tyro’s eyes, blinks, and walks away from the window.

Tyro sighs. He goes back to his stirring.

The door behind him swings open. Mai walks into the kitchen proper and starts grabbing jars from the shelf.

“I’m not a cook,” she says, “but I think you want more of this one.”

“What you wanna remember when you’re settin’ a fishin’ line,” says Due, demonstrating a complicated weaving pattern, “is that the fish don’t want you to eat ‘em.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

* * *

_The Boy in the Iceberg_

Act III Scene IX

_[Set: Prison Cell]_

_[PRINCE ZUKO sits alone behind the bars]_

PRINCE ZUKO: Oh, what woe! What agony! To be trapped in this cell without my honor! Honor! _[He shakes his fist]_ All the hard work I’ve put into disrespecting my father, wasted. What else can I do? I’ll never be Fire Lord while locked up in here. Why, I’m so angry, if I ever get out of here, I’ll join the Avatar! That’s what I’ll do. That would really stick it to my dad.

_[Sound from stage left: fighting]_

PRINCE ZUKO: Wait! _[He points through the bars of his cell]_ Who’s coming?

_[The sounds of fighting grow louder, then stop abruptly. A spotlight illuminates stage left]_

_[Enter: THE BLUE SPIRIT]_

THE BLUE SPIRIT: I’m the Blue Spirit!

PRINCE ZUKO: _[Gasps]_ The scourge of the Fire Nation! Are you here to kill me?

THE BLUE SPIRIT: No! I’m here to save you! _[THE BLUE SPIRIT cuts open the lock of PRINCE ZUKO’s cell]_

PRINCE ZUKO: But why?

THE BLUE SPIRIT: Any enemy of the Fire Lord is a friend of mine! Now hurry.

_[PRINCE ZUKO leaps onto THE BLUE SPIRIT’s massive mask]_

PRINCE ZUKO: My hero!

* * *

All in all, the few days before the Comet are quiet in the Prison Tower.

Hakoda has been planning for it, in as much as he can, since they tossed out the last guard. They’re on the final stage of disaster-preparedness: battening down the hatches. Ty Lee thinks the nautical term strikes a funny contrast to the actual work they’re doing—that is, basically building a barricade inside a giant block of concrete.

“The girls and I are really bonding,” Ty Lee says happily. “I think they might even ask me to join their group!”

Mai sets another sheet of metal against the divot of the window and makes a low noise of acknowledgement. She pops something small and crunchy into her mouth from a bowl on the floor, having missed lunch to help with preparations.

Ty Lee pauses.

“I hope you haven’t been lonely without me,” she says. She leans in and bumps her shoulder against Mai’s. “I know how I get sometimes, when I run off to do something new and exciting. Don’t worry! You’re still my favorite dangerous lady.”

“I know.” Mai cracks a tiny smile. “And you want to know something?”

“What’s that?”

“I haven’t been bored.”

Ty Lee blinks in surprise. Mai glances over, takes in the look on her face, and laughs. Her laughter is small but sharp, like harmless little shocks of electricity on a cold, dry day. Ty Lee tingles to her fingertips at the sound.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that,” Ty Lee cheers.

Mai shrugs.

“It’s good to get out of the house once in a while.” She tosses another handful of whatever she’s snacking on into her mouth. Ty Lee assumed the bowl was filled with fire flakes, but it suddenly occurs to her that nobody here would know how to make them.

“What are you eating?” Ty Lee peers over Mai’s shoulder, then gasps.

“Listen—”

“Mai!”

“They have a kick to them, they taste like mustard seeds—”

“You almost threw _up_ at the idea a week ago!”

“They’re fine if you don’t think about it!” She holds up a tiny beetle to the light between her thumb and forefinger, grimacing slightly. “Or look at their legs for too long.”

“Well, now I _have_ to know.” Ty Lee makes to snatch the bug out of Mai’s hand, but Mai is too quick. She shoves it into her mouth and shuts her lips with a disturbingly loud _crunch._

They stare at each other wordlessly. Mai chews.

“Here,” she finally says, apologetic. She holds up the bowl. “You can have the last one.”

Ty Lee giggles so uncontrollably she nearly chokes on the beetle. Mai was right, though—the taste is a lot like mustard seeds.

* * *

“What’s wrong with you? You could have hurt Aang!”

“What’s wrong with _me?_ What’s wrong with all of you?”

It quickly becomes apparent to Zuko that he probably should have mentioned that whole _My sister said she and our father are going to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground when the Comet comes_ thing way, way before this.

He’s been busy, alright?

He’s been busy, and stressed, and so constantly on his toes with the promise of the Comet and the end of the world and the fact that he might never be friends with Toph again, that when Aang disappears Zuko practically bursts into flame.

In his head, anyway, everything feels like it’s on fire. But his friends look to him—_kind of the expert on tracking Aang_—and he thinks about what Uncle would say.

_Breathe first._ The fire in his head rises and sinks, ebbs and flows, finally under control. The memory of Uncle is the memory of traveling, of gratitude for the smallest joys in life, of resourcefulness and of having old friends who might, at least a little bit, want to kill him.

That thought leads him to June, and June’s cryptic and unhelpful response leads him, as circular as its walls, back around to Ba Sing Se.

“My Uncle is somewhere in the city,” Zuko says as they pass above a ruined stretch of stonework along the Outer Wall.

“Great,” Toph mutters, the sound just barely reaching Zuko where he sits on Appa’s head.

Dark fields roll away below the bison’s body. It’s a small comfort that the soldiers didn’t scorch the earth here, but Zuko knows it had more to do with their need to feed their own occupying force than any willingness to preserve resources for the citizens.

Appa groans loudly as they approach the wall of the city proper. Zuko brings him down to land just outside it.

“What’s the plan?” Sokka asks. “It’s a big city, Zuko.”

“The tea shop. He’ll be there. Or if he’s not, maybe something there will help me figure out where he went.” Zuko runs a hand through his hair and stares up at the Wall. Although he knows it’s been broken somewhere along its great length, standing beside its immense height leaves him awestruck and a little bit dizzy.

He used to live behind this wall. He saw it every day until it became as natural a part of the landscape as the sky, and just as endless.

“Should we fly in?” Suki asks.

As if perfectly aware of what’s just been said, Appa rumbles low in his massive throat. Katara strokes him just below the horn.

“I don’t think Appa is going to be okay with that. He has some really bad memories in Ba Sing Se,” she says, understatement.

“We’d be too visible from the air anyway,” Sokka adds. He squints up at the ancient stone barrier. Zuko can’t forget that there are two more where this one came from between them and Uncle.

“We need to be stealthy, then,” says Suki. “As small a team as possible, in and out.”

“I’ll go.” It’s the only logical conclusion, sending Zuko in alone. He knows where the shop is; he knows the city—or at least he did; he’s got experience doing things on his own.

He doesn’t know why the prospect hurts, but nobody here has the luxury of time to worry about Zuko’s feelings or comfort, least of all himself.

“Not by yourself.” Sokka shakes his head. “Remember, the Dai Li are working for Azula now. You need someone to—” he interrupts himself with a jaw-cracking yawn, “watch your back, or you’ll have a flying rock fist through your head before you can say _For the honor of the Earth Kingdom_.” He mimes the aforementioned rock fist slamming against his own temple.

Zuko tenses. Time is slipping away the longer they spend talking instead of _doing._ Aang is who-knows-where, and the Comet is so close Zuko can feel it—the promise of power an ever-present dread, indefinably deep in his chest, at odds with the natural waning of his fire with the long-set sun.

He knows the right answer to the question. He grits his teeth.

“I’ll do it,” Toph says.

Zuko’s jaw goes slack.

“What?” Toph challenges everyone’s sudden silence. “I’ll be able to sense the Dai Li before they mess with us. Anybody got a better idea?”

“Okay,” Sokka says decisively. “Zuko and Toph, you’ll go in, find Iroh, and come back. If you can’t get to him by sunrise, get out of there no matter what. We don’t have time for _another_ jailbreak.”

Toph scoffs in amusement. “I could bust out of any jail.”

“I know.” Sokka pats her on the shoulder proudly. “But maybe try not to get arrested until after we save the world, okay?”

“That’s fair,” she acknowledges. “Well, Zuko?” She gestures to the Wall as if to say _After you._

Zuko nods dumbly. He finds his tongue after a few seconds and turns to the rest of the group.

“It’s been a long day. You guys should get some rest.”

“We’ll see you both by sunup,” Sokka says.

“Or else,” Katara threatens caringly.

Zuko’s mouth curves in a weak smile.

The gates belong to the soldiers, and the sewers—well, they’re just gross. To get into Ba Sing Se, Toph uses neither.

She plants her feet as Zuko hovers awkwardly over her shoulder. Hands extended, wrists curved out, she opens a tunnel under the Wall. That ancient city beneath Ba Sing Se has been nothing but a pain up til now, but this time Toph is determined to make it work for her.

As they descend underground, Zuko cups a hand in front of his chest. Toph feels a warmth against her back and assumes he’s carrying a flame. Sighted people, so concerned about light all the time.

Toph earthbends and they walk. She pauses occasionally to get her bearings—the massive weight of the wall overhead, eventually behind, the cavernous space of old Ba Sing Se ahead. The crystals sing in that too-perfect way that crystals do. There’s a reason Toph prefers stone and the imperfections in metal.

Zuko was right about one thing. It’s been a long day. She shoves another twenty feet of stone out of their way with one hand and covers her yawning mouth with the other.

“You can head back once we get to the surface,” Zuko says quietly.

“Huh?”

“I can do this by myself. You don’t have to stay.”

“Wow,” Toph whistles bitterly. “You really don’t want me around _that_ bad?”

Zuko stops. His quiet feet plant hard against the floor of the tunnel.

“What?”

“We have a job to do,” Toph says without turning around. “Find your uncle, leave Ba Sing Se, save the world. I’ll get out of your hair forever as soon as I can, okay?”

She hates the tiny break in her voice, but at least Zuko can’t see the way tears sting the corners of her eyes. She shoves her hands forward again—the rumble of shifting rock buries the sound of her tight breathing. The end of the tunnel finally breaks through to an open cavern, the first chamber of many.

“Toph,” Zuko says gently. She _hates_ it when he’s gentle. It reminds her of when they were friends.

“Zuko,” she spits back.

“You…”

Toph braces herself for a verbal confirmation of what his behavior has been telling her for weeks. She wasn’t ready for how losing a friend could make her feel. Sure, she fights with Katara, she isn’t always the nicest to Aang, she gets flustered and embarrassed around Suki since the Serpent’s Pass thing—but she _hurt_ Zuko. He hurt her, too.

“You’re the one who doesn’t want _me_ around,” Zuko finally says.

Toph blinks.

_“What?”_

“You’ve made it clear how you feel.” Zuko shifts awkwardly, as if explaining this to himself as well as Toph. “I get it. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. There’s nothing I can do to make it up to you, but I—”

Toph shifts one foot. She turns slightly, cocks her head, and lunges.

“Look out!”

“Wha—!”

The side of the tunnel bursts open just where Zuko stood a moment ago, before Toph bucked the ground beneath him and sent him toppling out of the way. A tall man with stone gloves over his hands leaps out of the hole like a gopher-rabbit.

Zuko is back on his feet. He kicks out and hooks a foot around the Dai Li agent’s ankle, pulling the man to the ground. Toph stomps forward again, pulling a heavy column of stone to pin the wriggling man down. She shoves her open palms forward, and the stone gloves slam into the ground and meld with the floor of the tunnel.

“Let’s go,” she says. Zuko takes off behind her.

Toph can sense more Dai Li now, hanging from the ceiling of the cavern like lurking spiderflies. They’re too good at staying still, and Toph was distracted before, but now she knows they’re there. She dodges a flying stone fist and then shatters another in midair. Zuko punches hard toward the ceiling. The sound of firebending and a warm burst of air reach the side of her face. A pair of agents scatter to get away from the blast.

“How did they know we were there?” Toph pants. She doesn’t like running while she fights. It’s hard to keep herself rooted that way—she’s supposed to be immovable. But they _need_ to keep moving.

Zuko groans.

“They must have seen my fire,” he mutters. “Stupid.”

“Yeah,” Toph laughs breathlessly. “That _was_ pretty stupid.”

“I have an idea.” Zuko stops to sweep a leg through the air. Dai Li stumble backwards.

“I’m all ears.” Toph senses an agent drop from the ceiling. She waits, counting off the seconds as he falls, then pulls a horizontal slab of stone from the cavern wall to knock him sideways.

“Put up a wall as soon as we get to the next cavern. We’ll have a second where they can’t—” He kicks a boulder right out of the air, which Toph has to admit is actually pretty cool, “see us. Earthbend us into the ceiling, and we’ll keep tunneling. They don’t have your earth-sense, right?”

“If these jokers can see with their feet,” she says, “I’ll eat Sokka’s ugly hat.”

“How do you know it’s ugly?”

“I trust Katara’s taste in hats.”

Zuko chuckles under his breath as they pass through the half-circle entryway into the next cavern. Toph closes the opening with one hand and raises a platform with the other. It’s a lot of earth to move at once. It would likely be too much for anyone else.

Luckily, she’s Toph Beifong.

The Dai Li come crashing through the wall as Toph and Zuko fly upward, borne by the momentum of their ascent, and Toph shoves the stone ceiling rushing toward them aside. They fly several feet into the hole before gravity catches up. At just the second where they would have fallen, Toph closes the opening.

They don’t exactly land gracefully. They spend a couple seconds as a groaning pile. Zuko recovers first and steadies Toph as she stands. He hovers uncomfortably, clearly checking that she’s okay without wanting to tip his hand too much.

Toph blows her bangs out of her face. She stomps again and resumes their tunneling.

Zuko is slow to keep up. He shuffles forward with a hand sliding along the wall of the tunnel. He yelps, startled, when the empty space behind him fills with earth.

“I don’t want them following us,” she says. “Can you move a little faster?”

“I can’t see,” Zuko grumbles. He quickens his pace and runs straight into Toph, nearly knocking her flat on her face. She sighs.

“Here.” Toph reaches out, takes one of Zuko’s wrists, and lays his hand on her shoulder.

“Thanks,” Zuko says, voice low.

Soon, their heartbeats fall into something approaching a normal rhythm. Toph gets her breathing under control. The weight of Zuko’s hand on her shoulder is weirdly comforting. It reminds her to say something.

“Zuko,” Toph says slowly, “are you still mad at me?”

“What?” He sounds baffled. “I was never mad at you. You were mad at me! _Are_ mad at me. Right?”

“I was,” Toph confirms. “But I’m not Katara, Zuko. I don’t hold a grudge forever. I’ve been _waiting_ for you to say sorry.”

“I said—”

“To me. Say sorry to _me._ Everyone else got a life-changing field trip to make up for your panic at the invasion. I don’t even get a personal apology?”

“You’re kind of getting a field trip right now,” Zuko points out.

Toph laughs. “I guess I am.”

They walk in silence for a long moment.

“Toph, I’m sorry.” Zuko takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry for what I did at the invasion, and I’m sorry I didn’t understand what you needed from me afterwards. I thought you wanted me out of your life, and I wanted to respect your choice.”

“Thanks, Zuko.” Her mouth turns upward in a small smile. “I’m sorry too.”

“For what?” Zuko tilts his head, puzzled.

“I could have said all that to you weeks ago. And I should have talked to you in the first place instead of storming off.”

“You had every right to be angry.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, “but I kept it up even after I wasn’t angry anymore. I guess I thought everything would just… fix itself. I haven’t had a lot of friends before.”

“Me neither,” Zuko laughs.

Toph pats the hand on her shoulder.

“I’m glad we’re learning,” she says. She pauses and turns around. Zuko’s hand falls away. Toph thinks for a second, then punches him in the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“That’s how I show affection.” She hooks her arm around Zuko’s elbow and leads him toward the surface.

A knock comes at the door of the teashop. It’s terribly late. Iroh would normally be asleep by now, but meetings have run increasingly long the closer they get to Sozin’s Comet. He sighs, sets down the rag he uses to wipe the tables, and stretches with a groan.

It is not the secret knock of a fellow Lotus. He goes to the door anyway. He has a reputation to maintain as a figure in the community.

“We are closed, unfortunately,” Iroh says as the door cracks open. “But please stop by another—”

He stops.

“Even for an old friend?” Toph grins at him.

“Well,” Iroh says around a chuckle of delight, “I suppose I can make an exception.”

A figure behind Toph shuffles closer.

“How about for family?” says a voice Iroh would know anywhere.

He pulls Zuko into a bone-crushing hug and ushers them both inside.

“Let me put a pot of tea on.” He bustles toward the kitchen.

“We don’t have time, Uncle,” Zuko says with what sounds like genuine regret. Iroh’s heart swells with pride.

“We have to get back to our friends,” Toph explains.

Zuko nods and looks Iroh in the eye, every bit the strong, honest, brave young man his father never was. “Can you come with us?”

“Hmm.” Iroh strokes his beard.

He has a place here, in the wave of the coup that will begin from within the city’s very walls, but plans can be rearranged. He has wanted to see how the Outer Wall camp is doing, after all—now that Bumi has joined them, he imagines it’s much livelier out there than in here. Jeong Jeong isn’t known for his sense of humor.

More convincingly, Zuko has a pleading, exhausted look beneath his brave exterior. The last time he asked Iroh to come with him, Iroh had to break his own heart by saying no. It’s the least he can do, really, to shuffle some things around for quality time with his family.

“And if you have a better way of getting there than digging our way out of the city,” Toph adds, “I’d love to hear it. I love digging, don’t get me wrong, but we’ve kind of been up all night.”

Iroh laughs.

“If you don’t mind hiding in the back of a wagon, I know someone who would be of great help to us.”

“Us?” Zuko perks up hopefully.

“Yes, Zuko.” Iroh unties the apron from around his waist. “It’s about time I introduce you to some old friends, don’t you think?”

* * *

No one in the Prison Tower sleeps the night before the Comet. Hakoda stands as steady as a weathered stone. Chit Sang breathes strangely, as if there’s something in his chest eating up all the air he can take in. Pipsqueak rests his massive head on The Duke’s shoulder.

Mai feels cold, even through her layers, even in the burning heat of summer’s end. Ty Lee reaches out and takes her hand.

* * *

“What about us?” Sokka asks. “What’s our destiny today?”

Iroh smiles.

“What do you think it is?”

* * *

For miles and miles, further than the peak of any mountain or the plume of smoke from any wildfire would be visible, the people of the Earth Kingdom see, cutting through the blood-red sky, a single beam of bluest light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I've had the broad strokes of this chapter planned for months and months, but as they say, life happens.
> 
> [Here is a link](https://feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf) to Angela Davis's 2003 book _Are Prisons Obsolete?_ and [Here is a link](https://www.autostraddle.com/police-and-prison-abolition-101-a-syllabus-and-faq/) to a syllabus and FAQ about police and prison abolition in the United States.


	10. Epilogue: Unquestionable Honor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to let the end of this story speak for itself, so I'll try to keep the notes brief.
> 
> Thank you. Thank you everyone who read and commented, thank you for your enthusiasm and your kindness. Thank you for paying attention to the resources I've linked and seeking out more ways to help in your own communities—keep on fighting. Keep on doing what you can to make the world safe and equitable. Only justice will bring peace.
> 
> This is the longest writing project I've ever finished. That would make this fic very special to me no matter what, but it's infinitely more special knowing how many people have put their time and energy into reading, commenting, rec'ing, reaching out to me on tumblr, etc. It's truly humbling and truly an honor.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: discussion of war, colonialism, and genocide, depiction of injury, and awkward flirting.

As Sozin’s Comet passed out of the world, or so the grand histories say, the Fire Nation took its first peaceful breath in a century.

Certainly this was not the case for everyone. Many were not breathing peacefully; others were not breathing at all. You have to begrudge historians their favorite embellishments. Nobody ever told a good story without at least a little tension between belief and disbelief, and if you couldn’t tell it as a story, history would be dreadfully boring.

Another favored figurative statement from the history scrolls is this: Fire Lord Zuko entered his father’s court like a raging mooselion in a china shop.

It was no longer his father’s court, of course. Fire Lord Zuko made certain of that. The greatest shock of all was that he did not do so with vengeance. The story of his Agni Kai—his first, that is—had gotten out among the people, and the nation held its breath yet again, braced for the rash of banishments surely to come among the highest generals.

Oh, the generals were removed, and admirals, and sundry others of various rank and standing, but the man who had so gleefully sent the 41st Division to their slaughter was only one on a long list. He was not even at the top of such a list.

One would assume, had he not already faced justice at the hands of the great Ocean Spirit, that even Admiral Zhao would have been treated with dignity by the Fire Lord, though this is mere speculation unbefitting a student of history.

There were trials, of the sort appended by the word _jury_ rather than _combat_. There were speeches attesting to the violent, paradoxical lie of the March of Civilization—the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe orated from the steps of the palace with the Fire Lord behind her. The Dragon Bone Catacombs opened their jaws and belched truths like stinging, black smoke, tarnishing Sozin’s burnished face. Sozin’s face fell from the walls of the palace in a massive heap of red and golden thread.

Through it all, the Avatar was there.

The Great Bridge, the last airbender, the balance-maker a century in the making, would go on to build a world with his own two hands. Fire Lord Zuko would do the same, side-by-side. Their friendship would be legendary, immortal, the stuff of tales passed down in histories like this one.

Though, to those who knew him in those early days at the end of the war, he was just Aang.

“Aang!” Zuko looks up from an intimidatingly dusty scroll with a smile. His free hand strokes gently over Duke’s feathery little head, perched as she always is on a brass stand by his side.

“Hey.” Aang moves closer and peers over the Fire Lord’s shoulder. “Whatcha reading?”

“It’s, um, it’s an old census.” Zuko pushes the scroll to the side so Aang can get a better look at it. “From the catacombs. You might want to read this, actually.”

Aang’s eyes scan over the old document. The writing is cramped and bureaucratic, stuffy in a way he isn’t used to. There is a line for each household on a given island, the number of people living there, occupation, bender or non-bender—

He leans in closer.

“How old is this?” he asks, just this side of breathless.

“A hundred and sixty years,” Zuko says. “It’s from not long after Sozin took the throne.”

Aang reads it again, and again. There it is, unmistakable.

“There were—” Zuko starts to explain, as if Aang could have missed it.

“Airbenders in the Fire Nation.” Aang draws his fingers slowly over the wrinkled surface of the paper. He laughs, and it comes out pained. “There were airbenders everywhere, Zuko. We were nomads.”

“I know. But—”

Aang’s fingers trace the characters in the middle of the line. _Occupation: bison-herder._ He reads the names laid out in front of him and vows not to forget a single one.

“—proof, this is something we can use to fix the history books, the school curriculum. This is a document from Sozin’s own time that shows the propaganda is _wrong._” Zuko is still talking, excitedly running a hand through the hair perpetually falling loose from his topknot.

“That’s great.” Aang shakes his head to clear it. “No, it’s _amazing._ It really is. Thank you for showing me.”

Zuko pauses. He puts a hand on Aang’s shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to throw this at you,” he says apologetically. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Aang sighs, feeling lighter as he frees the air inside him. “Maybe I’ll visit sometime. See if there’s… anything still there.”

Zuko’s eyes go sad around the edges. He sits back in his chair and lets Aang read his fill of the scroll.

“I understand if that’s something you need to do on your own,” he says at length, “but if you want some company, I could always say I’m away on important Avatar business.”

Aang smiles, eyes still on the scroll. On the names. On the proof of real people’s lives, decades of thought and love and happiness and heartbreak, shrunken down to a few strokes of ink.

“I’ll think about it,” Aang promises. He pulls his eyes away and meets Zuko’s. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” he says earnestly.

The moment breaks when Duke chirps with indignation. Aang laughs and strokes his thumb down her soft neck.

“Hi, Duke! I can’t believe I forgot to say hello to you.”

“She’s been asking about you all day,” Zuko deadpans.

Duke butts her head into Aang’s hand as if searching for snacks. As little as he likes meat, he thinks he should start carrying around something to give her while at the palace.

“Oh, then she should come with us.”

“Us?” Zuko blinks. “Where?”

“That’s why I stopped by,” Aang explains casually, patting the hawk once more. “Katara asked me to kidnap you.”

“Huh?”

Before he can fully process the thought, Aang throws Zuko into the air with a blast of airbending, catches him over his shoulders, and runs out the door.

“Aang!” Zuko bellows as they speed down the palace’s wide, beautiful halls. “Put me _down!”_

“Sorry, your Fieryness,” Aang chirps, “but it would be irresponsible of me to ignore your physician’s orders!”

“That’s it!” Zuko huffs as Aang deposits him on the floor of what was, until recently, the royal hair-combing chamber. “You’re banished!”

“I don’t think you can banish him,” Katara points out from where she’s leaning against the large tub, arms crossed. “He’s not actually your subject. Also, Aang, next time, could you be a little more careful with Zuko? You know how delicate he is.”

Zuko’s face turns plum-beet red.

“Sorry, Katara.” Aang grins and rubs the back of his head.

“You’re both banished,” Zuko says. He climbs to his feet and stomps to the chair by the tub with all the drama of an overtired toddler.

“Sure,” Katara replies, a mocking pout on her face. “I’ll go. As soon as you stop getting yourself struck by lightning.” She pulls an orb of water into her hands and separates it into two flat planes, one glowing on each palm.

“That was _one time,_” Zuko grouses. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Technically it was twice,” Aang chimes in. “You just redirected it the first time.”

“You’re double-banished.”

Katara rolls her eyes. “Hold still.”

“I know the drill,” Zuko mumbles. He pulls the front of his robes open and starts unwinding the bandages over his chest. Aang can’t help but wince slightly as the angry inflammation reveals itself. He knows Zuko will have a scar there forever, as well as he knows he’ll have one of his own on his back until the day he wakes up in his next life.

“Any pain?” Katara asks as she lays her hands on the wound.

“Just the usual,” Zuko shrugs.

Aang pulls a line of water from the tub and runs through some simple waterbending forms. It’s a ritual by now, any combination of the group keeping Katara company while she conducts her healing sessions with Sokka or Zuko. It’s a calming place to be—one of the only calm respites lately, despite how much he would prefer legs or hearts not need so much healing at all.

“I told you they’d be in here,” comes a familiar voice from the hall just outside the chamber.

Sokka pokes his head in and then leads Suki by their clasped hands, moving with his crutch like he was born holding it. According to Katara, he’s almost cleared to walk without its help. Naturally, this means the last couple weeks have seen him trying to learn to do any number of ill-advised tricks with the thing. Aang is confident he’s almost got the backflip figured out.

“Hey, guys,” Aang greets. He sweeps a water whip toward Sokka jokingly, who ducks and shakes a fist at Aang, keeping the crutch clasped under his armpit.

“Did Zuko get himself gravely injured again? I told you to be careful going down those stairs by yourself. Your big, goofy Fire Lord robes are a tripping hazard.” Sokka shakes his head.

“Very funny,” Zuko mutters. He winces slightly at a twist of Katara’s hand. She flattens her fingers and the tension in his face fades.

“It was!” Sokka agrees brightly. Suki laughs. The two take a seat on the side of the tub. Aang adds an over-the-head flair to the usual bending form, just to show off.

He can do that now—he can let bending be _for fun_ again. There will always be more to do. There will always be his Avatar duties, probably more than he’s ever known in this life. But for the first time since the solstice the better part of a year ago, he has time. The road ahead is long. The work is never done. But finally, at least for now, he can take a breath and laugh with his friends without the guilt of wasting the smallest grains of sand in a too-small hourglass.

“Are you ready to leave tomorrow?” asks Suki. “It’ll be nice to see your uncle again.” She dips her fingers into the water and splashes Aang playfully.

Zuko nods. “Toph’s meeting us there, right?”

“Yep,” Aang confirms. He sticks out his tongue and bends a tiny wave back at Suki, high enough to wash over her forearm but not douse any of her clothes.

“If I know her, she’s probably already on her way from Gaoling,” Katara comments. “She hates that house.”

“She hates Ba Sing Se too,” Sokka points out.

“Mm,” Zuko hums noncommittally. Aang almost asks what that noise means, but decides to leave it. He takes a leaf from Toph’s book and thinks, _If it’s important, I’ll find out._

* * *

Mai knocks softly on the doorframe. The kitchen of the Jasmine Dragon smells like sweet incense. It tickles Mai’s nose. She’s surprised to find it not unpleasant.

“General Iroh?” she says softly.

“Ah, hello Mai,” he greets with a smile as warm as the steaming pot on the stove in front of him. “I have been retired a long time, you know. You can call me Iroh—or Uncle, like the rest of the young people have started doing. It makes me sound like one of those old-fashioned outlaw leaders, though I suppose with my recent accomplishments I can’t really deny it.”

He bustles about as he speaks. Mai is accustomed to teamaking that relies more on ceremony than love, but the way he does it, easy as breathing, speaks to the latter. Mai smiles. Just a bit. The old man’s clever eyes catch the quirk of her mouth.

“But forgive me,” he adds, setting down his teapot. “I’m sure you didn’t come to listen to an old man’s rambling. Would you like some tea? Or are you like my nephew, thinking you can be sick of it?”

“I was born sick of tea.” Mai takes a seat anyway. The stool is clearly for the purpose of resting old bones while leaves steep, not entertaining a guest. She likes the lack of pretension—a war hero and member of the royal family shouldn’t be serving tea to the daughter of a minor governor at all, let alone in the back room of an Earth Kingdom shop.

The Fire Lord himself handed her a cup earlier this evening, so casually she didn’t even bother to look up from her pai sho game with Suki. The world is different now. Mai thinks she might like it.

Iroh laughs.

“No one in the world hates tea,” he says, cutting the air with his hand for emphasis. “Many think they do, but they have either never found the right one, or have simply been served very bad tea.”

He pours her a cup. Mai decides not to let him know she was joking.

“So,” he says as he pulls out another stool and sits across from Mai. “What can I do for you?”

Mai sips her tea—it’s good, obviously—and thinks about where to start.

“Zuko told me I should talk to you,” she says.

Every advisor whom Zuko hadn’t already ejected from the palace pending trial for crimes against the welfare of their nation had insisted it was _improper_ for the Fire Lord to fly to Ba Sing Se on a bison. None would listen to reason when he had argued that he was objectively much safer traveling with the Avatar and two of the greatest bending masters in the world than among a crew of Fire Nation naval officers, no matter how specially hand-picked for their unlikelihood to commit an assassination those officers were.

“I guess I’ll be your bodyguard,” Mai had said, and that was that.

Yesterday found them deep in conversation on the wagon trundling toward Ba Sing Se, an unfamiliar flood of honesty pouring from her mouth.

“It’s not that I liked being a glorified bounty hunter,” she explained. “But I felt free. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t stuck in a box, only knowing what other people told me. Yeah, I was still doing your sister’s dirty work, but I had secrets of my own. It’s stupid—when I found out you were doing that whole treason thing, I was actually excited. I finally knew something important that nobody else did. It was… new. And I didn’t _like_ living in a prison either, but I learned a _lot_. It turns out other people are what makes life interesting.” Mai laughed wryly. “Who knew?”

“You should talk to my uncle,” Zuko said after a long pause.

“About what?”

“Just tell him what you told me. Trust me.”

Mai does.

Iroh strokes his beard. He tips his teacup to his mouth when she finishes speaking, nods, and asks her a question: “You’re quite the pai sho player, are you not?”

“I‘m okay,” Mai confirms.

“Would you honor me with a game? That is,” he adds, eyes twinkling with something Mai can’t parse, “if you’re not as sick of it as you are of tea.”

“Sure,” Mai agrees. “Zuko says you have a weird way of playing.”

Iroh laughs.

“He would say that, yes. Perhaps you’ll have more patience for it.”

Mai finishes her tea and shrugs. “Let’s find out.”

* * *

Zuko didn’t realize, when he returned to the Fire Nation, that he’d been followed.

It isn’t long before the stalker reveals herself. And she greets Zuko customarily, a respectful salutation befitting his status and hers.

“Boo! I’m an assassin,” Toph yells as she pops up through the marble floor of Zuko’s chambers.

Zuko, for his part, embodies the calm restraint his people will come to associate with his legacy for generations, and nearly topples out of his chair with a yelp.

“Don’t _do_ that,” he gasps. Toph cackles.

“Somebody has to keep you sharp.”

“The _actual_ assassins haven’t done that well enough, right.” Zuko rolls his eyes. He can’t manage to bite back a smile, and he doesn’t try. It’s no use with Toph anyway. “What’s up?”

She sits heavily on his bed and kicks her bare feet up onto a low table.

“Nothing.” Toph idly starts picking her nose.

“Uh huh.” Zuko turns back to the scrolls at his table and waits.

He’s been working on _patience_ recently. People assume it’s one of those things he learned from Uncle. It feels like a game, like a harmless secret kept in childhood, to smile quietly and keep to himself the fact that he learned it more from Toph.

She’s an indulgent teacher, when she wants to be. She gives him the win this time.

“I was wondering if you wanted to play pai sho,” she says at last. “I know you don’t have much time for games and stuff, now that you’re the Fire Lord and everything—”

“I’d love to,” Zuko interrupts, already standing.

Toph grins.

“Don’t think, just because you were almost electrocuted and you’re the leader of a country, that I’ll go easy on you,” she warns over the board.

Zuko plans to leave the new stone table where it is in the palace garden. It looks pretty good next to the turtleduck pond. Maybe he’ll even have it painted.

“I would never,” he promises. “Does this mean you think I’m a worthy opponent now?”

Toph places her rock tile boldly in the center of the board.

“Let’s see how your skills have improved now that you’re a wise ruler,” she says. “I can’t be seen in public with a friend who can’t even beat a blind girl at pai sho.”

Zuko smiles so wide his cheeks ache.

“What?” Toph laughs. “Your heart did a thing. Are you that scared of losing, oh fiery one?”

“I beat you last time,” he points out.

“By accident,” she scoffs.

Zuko shakes his head, still beaming. He’s thinking a lot of childish things, recently. Making up for lost time. And it would make him sound like a little kid to say it, so he keeps it to himself, but cherishes this: the first time Toph has called him her friend since the Western Air Temple.

“That’s how I got started firebending too, and look at me now.”

“Yeah, do I need to remind you about the whole _electrocuted_ thing again?”

Zuko laughs. His hand hovers over the White Lotus, but he takes the light spirit instead.

“So,” he says, “how have you been since last time you were here? We didn’t get a chance to talk much in Ba Sing Se.”

“Is it that much of a shock that I’d rather hang out with your uncle? He’s way cooler than you.”

“I know,” Zuko agrees, and waits with the question hanging in the air.

Toph goes quiet. She moves her dark spirit tile into the southern mountain.

“I was visiting my parents,” she says.

“How was that?” Zuko asks, voice soft. He adds his wheel to the mountain, next to Toph’s spirit.

She shrugs. “Was okay.”

The garden is full and lush with the sounds of a fading day, a fading summer. Island badgerfrogs, much smaller than their mountain cousins, chirp from the bushes and the edges of the pond. Water laps. Stone pai sho tiles _clack_ against a stone table.

“They haven’t changed,” Toph says. Her voice doesn’t have any silence to break. She sounds like a natural extension of the landscape. “But I have. A lot. I wasn’t happy there before, but now I know what it feels like to… _do_ things. I can’t pretend to be the girl they still think I am.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I know.”

There’s an unspoken _but._

She shouldn’t pretend, _but_ she wants their love. _But_ she misses them. _But_ she doesn’t know how to stop needing the drops of affection she soaked up like a wilting plant on the occasions they bought the lie.

“I—” Zuko clears his throat. “I couldn’t rely on my parents for much either. When I was a kid. My father was… I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he croaks. It feels like a betrayal to say it, but there’s nobody else he’d rather speak this truth to. “And I love my mom. She was the only person I felt safe around. But now that I’m older, looking back… there wasn’t much she could do. She was as trapped as any of us, being married to my father. Trying to give me the love I didn’t get from him _and_ guide Azula away from her worse instincts without undermining _prince Ozai,_” Zuko spits the name, then stammers when he realizes how much he’s talking about himself. “She was under a lot of pressure.”

“Sure,” Toph nods, like she’s actually making sense of what Zuko is getting at. “The best teacher I ever had was a badgermole.”

Zuko chuckles.

“My uncle was my best teacher, even though I didn’t appreciate him for a long time.” He looks at Toph, gauging, and adds, “He likes you. You’re practically his niece, I think. If you wanted to be.”

Toph’s eyebrows rise behind her fringe of hair.

“Does that make me your honorary cousin?”

“Well,” he says thoughtfully, frowning as she captures her first of his tiles, “I have better luck with cousins than with sisters. Or—Wait. Please don’t die.”

Toph throws her head back with a laugh.

“I don’t plan to.”

“Good.”

The game continues. Zuko starts the long slide toward losing, finally adept enough at pai sho to recognize his mistakes shortly after making them.

“Are you going to go live with them now?” he asks. “The badgermoles.”

“Good question,” Toph says. Her mouth twitches into a smile as she captures Zuko’s light spirit. “I was actually thinking I might hang around here for a while.”

“Oh.” Zuko blinks in surprise.

“I’m assuming the Fire Lord could always use more rich friends.” She shrugs with a practiced air of apathy. “And I wouldn’t mind knocking assassin skulls.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly why Ty Lee is still here,” Zuko laughs.

“What about Sokka and Suki?”

“They’re—” Zuko rubs the back of his neck, “probably also here to fight assassins.” It’s not a lie, technically, and Toph knows well enough to leave _that_ alone for now.

“Things with you are never dull, Sparky.”

“I wish that were a compliment,” he sighs morosely. Toph laughs.

“We have our whole lives to get boring,” she says.

“I don’t think that’ll ever happen,” Zuko grumbles. “The universe just loves making things happen to us.”

“You sound like Sokka.” Toph sticks her tongue out. “And speak for yourself. The universe does things to _you. I_ am a force of nature.”

“You got me there.” Zuko captures Toph’s rock tile. “Ha!” He crows triumphantly.

“Nice move,” she says approvingly. “I win.”

“Huh?” Zuko watches in dismay as his brief victory starts a cascade of moves from Toph, completely wiping the board clean of his tiles. He groans.

“Get used to it.” Her grin eats up her entire face. It flickers briefly, almost unsure. Zuko realizes that he never actually responded to her offer to stay.

“Hey,” he says, “I have something for you.”

“Okay?”

Toph gets up to follow him. His study isn’t far from the garden. The package came in the night before he returned from the Earth Kingdom, and Toph’s arrival is a pleasant surprise for more than one reason. It means he doesn’t have to let the thing gather dust until the next time the wind blows her into the Fire Nation, at least. Or send it with a hawk and hope Toph finds herself in the company of someone who can read, to make any sense of the gift.

“Here.” Zuko drops a bundle of paper into her hands.

“Uh, Zuko,” she says, dripping with condescension.

“I know,” he says hastily. “I just, I thought you might like to have this. And um, since you might be sticking around, well. I’m happy to read it to you. Whenever.”

“How ‘bout now?” She still sounds suspicious, but mostly amused.

Zuko grins. He lifts the cover letter, and reads:

_“Attached to this report are selected excerpts from interview transcripts taken at Fire Fountain City Guardhouse and Municipal Jail, five days after Midsummer in the Year of our Fire Lord 100 AC. Under investigation following a violent altercation and severe damage to city property, were six young persons: Kuzon, Sapphire, Lee of Caldera Island—”_

He’s cut off by Toph’s shriek of laughter and an arm-numbing punch to his shoulder.

* * *

“Promise you’ll write to me?” Ty Lee pulls back from the hug and squeezes Mai’s shoulders.

“I already promised three times,” Mai laughs. Ty Lee’s eyes are impossibly big with the bright red paint boldly traced below the curve of her brow.

“Promise again,” she says.

“Okay.” Mai takes the hands off her shoulders, squeezes Ty Lee’s fingers, and says, “I promise.”

Ty Lee’s smile is sunlight, is a bonfire, is the first star appearing after a comet vanishes over the horizon and the bloody sky turns comfortingly dark.

Mai envies Ty Lee’s facepaint a moment later, because she knows her cheeks must flare as red as the Great Comet when Ty Lee kisses her.

“And I promise to write back,” Ty Lee chirps. She pulls back, cartwheels off the edge of the boat, and starts waving from the dock in the time it takes Mai to find her brain again.

“I—”

“Bye!” Ty Lee grins, too knowingly. Mai feels a surge of frustration and affection so strong she considers swanfish-diving over the edge of the boat as it pulls away. The Kyoshi Warriors behind Ty Lee giggle and cheer so loudly Mai can hear them, echoing off the water, long after they become a faceless collection of green and golden flashes.

She is still certain of which one is Ty Lee, though. At last, Mai raises a hand, puts it to her mouth, and blows a kiss.

The ship bears her toward a world full to bursting with things she doesn’t know yet. Mai, for once, is the one leaving someone else behind. She feels no guilt—they both know she’ll be back.

* * *

_As Sozin’s Comet passed out of the world, the world met peace like a fascinating stranger. It had been a century of difficulties._

No, that’s no good.

_It had been a difficult century._

No, even worse.

Iroh sighs. He sets down his brush and stretches his sleep-sore arms, greeting the risen sun. He feels the fire bloom in him, a natural cycle like flickering candles, like steady breathing.

The story ends where it began: in the Jasmine Dragon.

Ba Sing Se greets peace anew each morning. Iroh finds gratitude in the smallest blessings—a letter from his nephew; a familiar face in the shop; a sale on ginseng; an especially fragrant moonflower. The war had given Iroh, in his younger years, a very different set of priorities. It had left no space for the joy of watching a sunrise unless it foretold a great battle. It had marked the passage of a life into adulthood by celebrations not for the good a man could do, but the ways he might harm his fellow men, or lead them to harm. It had rarely—though not never—given him cause to sing.

There is no war in Ba Sing Se. There is no war anywhere, for the moment. There is the sunrise and the coming autumn. There is change on the wind. And, most pressingly for Iroh, there is tea to make.


End file.
